First Love
Channel: Danielle Brown
Date: 2022-11-09

FIRST LOVE

this is mostly haystacks
and children making tractor noises.
tired of wind, one of them curses it;

this is Samuel.  before day begins,
he is awake and taming his hair to keep the wind
from his many thoughts.  to himself, though, he looks like a threshed stalk, skinny as he is.

toward evening, the heavens withdraw from us. heavy.
able to move in rain only.

Samuel puts on his gloves and says to me,
nowhere is ours.
but…

 my coat isn’t done.
I’m a wheat-field, unzipped.
 the Oxford comma.

I’m a coin-toss; Sammy, a handful of spiders.
…but then, Sammy’s kiss—pressed, and

 peeled
 away…

and there are many moths flitting
in the distance between breaths,
winded in mimicry of seasons.
yes, a little girl of twelve.
my long piano fingers
with bitten-back, bright-orange nails
and such aimless, slow-motion intent.
pockets for gloves; hands on hands.
Sam’s hand on my knee was a continent.
me, pretending it was not heavy;
me, that I was never sinking.
(with which beginning did I ruin this?)

what’s wrong?  Sam asks.
a sky full of window—
slant press of light and torn carpet

while the evening…it…
crumbles like stale bread.

I’ve been away so long, I start to say,
thinking of my step-mother, her mother…
I try to imagine my one father,
but everything bleeds Jesus—
not in the church across the street,
as I remember, but sudden in our living room
like the stern face of my mother—siphoned & 
coiffed: the distance love will go as it sinks in-
to a torn couch of years…are you hungry?  Sam

interrupts—no wind in his hair
(as usual, I am frantic and late).

I put on my shirt,
 do up the buttons
…my new breasts
 …the tightness of my shirt.

this wasn’t… couldn’t
 have been
what sister meant
when she said: pretty.

~ * ~

I can still hear Sam’s sigh as we pulled away
from the neon hiss of the eat here diner—me :

feeling thrilled and self-conscious.
 me : like an echo following a train

 long swipes at continuousness
 and stations where we did not

 stop.

the camera
filmed : up
through Idaho Springs : on

toward Cheyenne, it filmed the top of the car.
(…except for the eight miles of open sunroof,

 when we got clouds.)

~ * ~

in the vacancy of a motel that night, I opened myself to him; his dark body shining as he heaved and pushed.

I turned to the wall and watched his shadow slowly undulate and ripple.  his belly—
sweat against my belly.

arms shaking.
 eyes,
pressed tight.

 Sam fell asleep.

I remember reading a book that evening,
but the rest has gone. (I can’t even remember
 what book.)

in the morning,
I was reading again.

for an hour, the only sound was the slow
 stop
 and start
and stop of the A/C.

I think Sammy stirred around noon.
 he didn’t say anything
as he stumbled from the sheets
 into the bathroom.
it was past checkout.

I heard Sam turn on the shower.

 he smiled and said, come.
 the water, fitful and wild.

 his body … his hands
 soaping my face
 my back … my thighs

 and then I remembered the camera