Memory of What I Should Regret

I’m twenty, the last virgin in my group

of friends, the only one without a little tray

of candy-colored hormone pills to make sure

I bleed on time. Other girls have burst into

a secret beauty, their lives an octave higher

than I can hear. Sirens not of air, but sea,

bodies moving in a new, watery way.

I have to know. I don’t care how.

I choose a married man whose voice

is shadows, whose eyes are also dark.

I’m a good girl and I want it to hurt.

It’s a Monday, a rainy night in their bed.

October. Their fourth child born yesterday.

I could go forever without giving it away,

I’ve loved the stillness of the self, sealed,

like the peaceful pause between

birth and breast when I was free.

But I’ve always thought I was a mermaid.

I stare into the mirror’s river across

the room, beyond the strange white creature

swimming there, and picture wife and child

joined in their ecstatic glow. He’s pushing me

down into a stream of song I don’t understand,

into her arms, her face above, so clear,

and I believe in innocence again, until he calls

to me, sound waves pulsing out what should be

my heart, but there’s nothing. It doesn’t exist.