The Boy Next Door

When I was four years old the boy next door
came over to battle with green army men,
or transformers or whichever plastic warrior
of childhood were given to us by parents
whose sole intention was to mold
good strong men of us, but instead
the boy, who was the same age and height as I,
wanted to teach me how people on TV loved,
so he took off his shoes, and I took off my shoes,
and next came all our heavy clothes,
so with nothing but space between us,
we knew this to be a sacred private moment,
so we swung the door’s hook into
the tiny hole, and suddenly we were alone
in the world, and his hand and mine touched
and our lips fumbled together and tongues flopped like
dying fish, until we climbed top bunk, covered our child
figures in sheet, hugged, kissed, mimicked sounds
of soap opera, our only teachers of forbidden touch,
but minutes later we were interrupted by Grendel's
screech and thud against our door, so the boy
and I sat up and held on to one another, searching
for some safety, and watched trembling
as a knife slipped threw the shaft and lifted hook,
so the door flew open, and we jumped off our bunk
and a hand wrapped in leather crashed into my chubby
little thighs and arms, and the boy next door, whose
name I don't remember, was never allowed to
cast an open eye on me again, and later, for the first
time in my life, my own father sat down and taught
me that love could be a sin, or maybe it was my
mother, either way, what I didn't forget was how soft
the boy felt pressed to my chest.