It’s music or maybe a smell, a lemon zest zing
dragging me back to a garbage packed school lot
abandoned of cars, it’s mid-summer, sticky hot.
I sit on the edge of my skateboard, I don’t know how to ride,
I only kick my thin legs until I swivel around old
beer cans and crash into the rusted chain link fence.
The brain is good at hiding things.
I wrinkle my nose at the slap scent of something pungent.
My stomach rolls, I don’t see his face, the boy who unbuckles his pants.
I only know he’s bigger than me, older. His t-shirt is white. He places
it over my head while his friends laugh. I’m still sitting on my skateboard,
looking down at the gum-laced blacktop. I kick my legs and coast home.
The next day I pull the boy two rows over into the alley
behind our houses and kiss him on the mouth, expert and all.
He’s my age, I think. I tell him to keep it a secret, wipe his spit
from my lips and go back to chalking the pavement in pink and blue.
Magic Mama 