Sex and Age

Sex with a white girl
(-after Hayes)

If you hide inside the broom closet,
You’d be able to walk tall again too:
The two week boot-camp with fatigue,

the drill sergeants rose tattoo. You
can be the only black boy along the
brick wall, outside, beyond the drill yard:

the cold open showers that fell short of
innocence, all our dicks were small, even
my own dark dagger was shallow,

the game of crash, the smell of blood in
barracks, between beds made neat every
morning, the trashcan alarm clocks.

How they would yell and bang, their spit
burned my irises that were forced to be
blue. The birds repeated the clap. Clap.

Clap. Boyish dreams subsided.
I was jerked back into the sick of all
The wrong reasons to be in love,

and she was the only one who understood,
the early teenage writings and angst, in the
blue and white composition book.

Genie, she would spend the spare afternoons
gently thumbing the pages, she kissed the
edges after each leaf, her powdery fingers

graced my neck, to my chest, to my waist,
stop…
what would your mother think? If you

made friend with a boy in shadow,
where the soft beats drew bodies so
close together that we would become one.

But we needed to be ready with all the
protections of Troy, it was decided that
tonight was to be our night to transcend,

while midnight watch was on leave,
the shadows moved quickly on the floor
to the door and we met with eyes. Briefly,

we must have gazed too long, and the
moment had passed and her moment was
preserved, I never had sex with a white girl.

-Chester Stoney