Over the
years
The road to the old go-cart tracks
Disappeared
As clumpy volunteers
Twined over the dirt ruts
And time got rid
Of those who knew it was there
And in the
comings and goings
Of 40-some years
I ceased to notice
The slight indentation
We’d taken after the Draft House closed
To ride out the night
Undiscovered
I was AWOL in the moonless black
My cover blown
By a boyfriend’s revenge call
In the
quiet, airless sanctuary
We sat
You belonged to a friend
And I belonged to anyone
The age-old tussle played out
Good girl—bad girl
And just how much
I wanted to be either
And in the
end
We crept home
Thinking ourselves under the radar
Our angry words
And hurt feelings
Branded on my face
Was I just
a tease
Or did I understand
More than I knew
When I said no
And made it stick
Today, I
drove by
The memories bulldozed
In raw earthen clumps
To make way for a condo development
I thought
of your dark hair
Fringed over green-brown eyes
Imploring
Playing the Viet Nam card
You came back
One of the nameless body bags
And I have wondered in odd moments
What difference our furtive coupling
Could have made
