When I was sixteen
my mother
imagined that I was a slut
just because I fucked a man
and wrote anguished poetry about it
in longhand
while sunbathing on the tar beach
roof of our tenement.
Too bad I couldn’t keep that notebook
in case I should ever feel snooty
reading those poems would keep me humble.
My mother found the book
and threw it down the incinerator chute
hoping that burning the poems would change
my trajectory.
which of course it didn’t
I just wrote another poem.