Dreams

Dreams

Fourteen, lying in bed late Sunday mornings
dreaming
of the smooth white trail between her breasts,
hard skin surrounded by soft lumps
I couldn’t imagine
resembling in any way the plastic things
I’d seen in magazines.

I tried to speak, closed my eyes
and concentrated
my thoughts, tried to send them
to that part of her that ached
like me, while she slept,
spread warm beneath her sheets. Fourteen
is the last time in a boy’s life when
he feels he can change the world;

if only I could reach some secret inside her,
trick her into seeing something in me
that would trigger the hot tongue
of her need, it wouldn’t have to be me
she saw, it wouldn’t have to be anything,
Jesus, the mall, study-hall. Love

is what’s made, lust, what makes it.
I thought that I would give her anything,
though I had nothing to give
but dreams, and these I tried.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Lilylit Review