as soon as i turn onto the street,
my pulse picks up pace to make up
for the slack on the gas pedal
as my foot sides with a little part of my heart
in the war between it and my brain
and the part of me arming myself
with a litany of you are untouchable nows.

the house on the corner sits there
as it always has, square and solid and red -
red as southern dirt coating holy little arms and legs,
red as skinned knees and scraped palms,
red as the pickup truck outside,
red as a hunted girl in the woods, red as -

the other house is off-white.
it’s long and flat and once upon a time
a boy kissed me right there in the front yard
on my seven-year-old strawberry cheek.
the boy moved out and took even the cabinet doors
and soon after the nightmare moved in.
i always steal a glance in case it’s outside.
today it is, casually sunning itself on the porch.
i feel its eyes on me as i pull in across the road.

the little drummer boy housed in my chest is going to war.
i never know if we win.
i fumble with the keys, torn between hurryuphurryupit’sthereit’sthere -
and i know, i know. it can smell fear.
i let the car door hang open before i’m ready to get out.
i’m open, it silently challenges. come and get me if you dare.
i check the mirror to make sure it doesn’t.

i slide out, fight the urge to pull myself in and instead grow larger.
i do not look over again.
every step to the red door i take thuds in my ears,
my own war drums. this fight i will win. i do not look behind me.
i knock on the door. i go in, feeling eyes burning me.
i’ve won.

until i walk back out -
then i do it all again.

there is a word used for us,
a phrase for our situation.

lo-li-ta.

was i your annabel, humbert?
your first,
in preparation of your very own lo,
your dolly, your lover?
did you care for me, really?

(of course not.
you were fourteen.
i was six.)

did you understand what you were doing?

(no, that's preposterous.
you were a young teen,
an adolescent,
with hormones.

i was the smiling,
unsuspecting
object of your clumsy,
confused affections.)

do you care about me now?

(nope, wrong again.
you have moved on, after so many years.
i no longer know you,
your face,
your name.)

did you ever spare a second thought
to the bright young child
you corrupted so early on
in both your lives as you grew?
did you dwell on thoughts of her
late into the night,
contemplating her fate?

do you know me?
would you recognize me,
if we passed on the street this very day?
would i be easily picked out
in a group of girls all my age and complexion,
plainly marked by the ever-darkening
stain you left on my soul,
my mind,
my body
so many years ago?

i have forgotten you,
your face,
your name,
yet you haunt me with re-emerging flickers,
flashes of memory
forgotten to have ever existed.

for so long,
you have stayed hidden,
shrouded in the fogs of distant,
intentionally buried images.
but now you're struggling, humbert,
fighting your way to the surface,
messing with my mind,
my entire sense of who i am,
altering my perception
of the accepted and the tolerated.

perverts beget perverts,
so they say.
and i, better than any other,
know that you are,
indeed,
a pervert.

so what, dear humbert,

will

     that

          make

                me?