She wanted to kiss me

otherwise she was fine

she was just the girl next door

before her trials began

 

one night our moms talked

she shouldn’t be that thirsty

a word I didn’t know, but it was bad

came and went out of my life

 

later she wrote to me out of the blue

she was blind now, in a wheelchair

she’d had a bad marriage

she’d been beaten

the girl next door, she’d been beaten, for real, by a bad husband

she said things were better now

 

I’m glad I’d let her kiss me, on the couch,

after much insisting

that was my only gift, of sorts, into her life

 

because who could know

at eight

that things could go bad

in big adult ways

when the worst thing was that sometimes

this girl wanted to kiss you

 

 

 

 

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