It’s October & you have yet to be
fetishized. Your blue crop
top is almost season inappropriate
because your pale stomach shines
like a lightning bug ovulating a month
too late. The boy waiting for you
in a shed is anxious & smells
like vodka & cowhide & sweat
& you’ll be paid. This isn’t how you
imagined your first time: Manure seeps
out of the wood & like his family’s holler his Adonis
belt serrates into a V & you plunge & he plunges
with you into the glowing dew where neither of you
are breathing & this is a form of commitment.
With this gurgling you are in the shape
of darting snails & you both zero
in on this moment: your purple
glitter shining in his eyes & his green
pants painting a pane in a stained
glass you have been constructing
like a monk unsworn to celibacy.
& this is easy, is it not? Like winter he is quickly coming
& this year you have not prayed for snow
but there are inches you cannot count
& like a failed meteorologist you are reading
these scans but you don’t know what to do
with these numbers because this is the first time
you have been touched & soon you will have a mob
to deal with but for now
he finishes & you wilt like an October sunflower.