Thirteen
after Lynn Melnick’s “Twelve”
Delaney, when I was your age I loved a girl named Jenn and when she had Becky ask me to come over that blue October afternoon to the house where she was babysitting and I slammed hard to the street bombing down a hill on my Jeff Phillips, one Kryptonic wheel catching a stone, my elbow all road rash and blood and when later I sat next to Jenn on the couch I think she expected me to kiss her but I wasn’t sure and didn’t know how to be sure so I played “Don’t Break the Ice” with the kid she was sitting for. And wasn’t I such a gentleman, a good boy, and so terrified of a girl? Delaney, your dolls, your Leias, your Reys look dusty on your bedroom shelf. When I was your age my GI Joes still posed but I was scared to play with them in case Dad came home muttering he’s weird to mom so when I was your age I made myself go outside to play football with my brother’s friends. When I was your age I stopped talking to Reggie about the X-Men on the bus even though the fall of the mutants was upon us. When I was your age I finally figured out how to punch a boy back hard enough he wouldn’t ever hit me again before school, on the blacktop, as I leaned against the chain linked fence that covered our backs from the knuckles and grabs of older boys. You tell me the cool girls are mean. You say you don’t bother with them but have you been in love, brought to balefire in another’s glance? When I was your age the girl I loved dumped me the night a ball went through Buckner’s legs and the Sox would lose the Series and she kissed Dave. Is a broken heart still a hurt all over the skin? Is this what you and Mom are whispering? You’ve told me kids you know are kissing. When I was your age some friends were getting laid but I just wanted to be seven again and forever in Ms. Kew’s class drawing pictures of Luke and Artoo. When I was your age we started sneaking beers because we were supposed to start sneaking beers but Delaney be safe, keep sitting on the den couch with us to argue and angle about what show we should all watch on a Friday night because when I was your age Friday night was football games, showing off to the girls by getting bloody in games of Smear the Queer, because when I was your age gay was AIDS and we were all too afraid to say anything but what we though was the right thing. Oh, poor Reggie on the bus. When I was your age the only good thing I ever did was stick up for him that one time and Voula heard me and told him and he said thank you. But mostly when I was thirteen I was a coward like the rest while you statue outside your school to protest gun violence, draw pictures where every woman is the right kind of beautiful, while you get yourself up in the blueblack dawn for a world you know will come at you with claws, while you laugh with your brother, talk to your mother, while you lean into me and let me give you the hug I didn’t know I needed.