The Maynard
Spring 2016

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Red Sarongs

The summer we turned thirteen, she and I
bloomed in red sarongs, fringed knots
above the knobs where our hips jutted out,
those new bones. We tucked our shirts
to bare ourselves, the notches of our ribs.
Just to see who would notice. The man
who sold pot outside the corner store
wrote his number on the back
of a liquor receipt, his hand smudging
the numbers, the paper pinned
under one palm against the store’s brick wall.
We imagined him drinking when we called
that night, when he asked us, what would you do
if I was there? My friend and I faking
strange animal sounds we’d heard on television
coming from the women we wanted to be.
Laughing behind our hands at him,
neither one of us knew the answer.