The first time I put my
hand on a girl's buttocks
I was pleased.
I didn't know what to do
when she didn’t mind.

I was 10

and I put it there it again (she blushed).
The line of my
forefinger and thumb a
perfect crescent
cradling her.

I thought about it.
We were both 10.

It fit like setting a wooden beam

tight without fasteners. 

She already understood
my hand was made for this
but I had loosed something
I didn't know how to value.

I wanted to tease,  to
exploit or antagonize.
Tugging her pony tail,
covering her with leaves.

Instead I was
drinking the waters at
Bath,
tasting a cheese,
noble, vital,
distinctive, out of my depth.

Over her shoulder

a pudgy thing with freckles

pants too tight and short.

(I blushed) I needed help.
A smiling fragility.

(Months later we kissed
in her bed with the horse
canopy, touched on the leather
bench in the 18 wheeler
and rode her
golf cart down the dirt
road to the edge of the woods.

I never met her family;

this awkward girl was

the only living thing

in a house of wax.)

we knew to embrace
before it was real.
My parents
called me home at sunset.