Boys Become Angels
It started at age eight.
Orgasms visiting in the night like thieves.
I was not prepared-what where they stealing?
If not my dumbfounding, what gift would they leave
disguised as hunger and longing?
I sang myself to sleep afterwards.
My secret was a blue light in the darkness,
a world that opened doors beyond skin.
Always hunger like a drum against my thighs
Always the slipping of will or reason
memory or promise, my secret
had nothing to do with boys.
Yet finding myself in the back of his Rambler, time and again
big sad eyes, believing I was now a woman, not a stranger
believing that the heart could sing.
He gave me drugs, Led Zeppelin, and a Singapore Sling,
promised the moon for my nakedness,
my mind elsewhere
the blue lights holding my hand.
Butterflies in my gut grew the size of hawks
warning of their prey.
Somehow the hunger won over my fear
boys became angels, my body their wings.
This is the Moon's Work
New and Selected Poems
Diana Hayes