KYLE
It was freshman year of college Kyle
you and me hanging out in your room.
Me crying over the boyfriend
I left behind back home,
you doing the same about your girl.
It was a new city for me, Kyle
and I didn’t have any friends yet really
and I thought that maybe this could be
just that
after you hugged me goodbye
and held on for a little too long.
But it wasn’t until two years later
outside poetry class
when you came up to me
angry
and called me a tease
told me that I had started something
that day that I didn’t finish.
Made me remember
10th grade when Rob told me
the worst thing a girl can do is give
a guy blue balls.
When he said that I started to think I had some kind of power
over boys
a power I needed to be careful with.
Something that could medically cripple them,
I thought of this
as the word
slut
bubbled up out of your mouth
and I realized there is power here
but it does not belong to me, Kyle.
[…] a few published. So thanks to Anti-Heroin chic for taking these three poems, thanks to Boyslut for Kyle, thanks to In Between Hangovers for Like a Terror and Oh The Things I Would Say (We Were Witches). […]
Thanks for the shout-out! ~Devlin