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.