One Summer

One Summer

I would swing for hours in the park

feeling the resistance as I pushed through the wind

the creaking hinges becoming a monotonous meditation

Your summer house was musty

Mold covered the bathroom walls

my hair going unwashed for days

When you would drop us at the sitters

sometimes she would offer me a shower

grateful to lose myself in the fog

The sitter's husband was nice

too nice...

When she went to the grocery store to buy ice cream

he sat too close

his fingers creeping up my thigh

I ran away

locking myself in the bathroom until she returned

Boys would ask my name in the park

I was Erica, or Victoria

I stole a pornographic book from the sitter's nightstand

secretly reading it one night
as I listened to my favorite Carpenter's album

In the morning I threw it in the woods behind your house

I wanted to go home

but I wasn't sure where that was anymore...

 

Angela Minard 2014©