legs & jaws & ponytails

she marks time with boys,

painting their dreams on bedroom walls with bloody hands. 

she rolls her tongue over their rolled cigarettes,

feigning coquettishness like all the older girls taught her.

& then, with her back against the headboard, he says 

open your mouth to the sound of my voice

& she screams,

a scream so animalistic it has all the neighborhood boys weak in the knees.

& they run home to their mothers

but their mothers do not console them, 

no tender voices over the kitchen sink.

instead, they stand by the window, unmoving, looking,

looking for her—

the girl that they were.

& when the boys pick up their limbs from the linoleum 

& run back to the grass, wild with the warmth in their bellies

as boys do, baseball bats clutched with white knuckles,

the women meet on the back patio.

janet brings the pack of marlboros she keeps behind the washing machine,

lisa the jameson from under the christmas lingere she wore in 2006

& mary anne a gun her husband told her to hide back when he too was a boy

& she swore, when his hands grew into those of a man,

that she threw it in the bonfire they had in the backyard.

& the girl, the one whose last august is marked by the scent of white wine on collar bone

& the stillness of january is kept like the secret he told her in the back of the party

as he said he fantasized about her apple pie lips

even when they were wrapped around his best friend’s tongue,

they say a prayer for her.

they hold hands, palms supple from fabric softener 

& hide all the evidence 

before the boys come home for supper.

& the women don’t ask why their clothes are stained crimson,

just another memory to tumble dry on high heat.