Sixteen and *** on the body and soul
As banal a story as any, boys will be boys after all.  But I am a girl —

It’s 1983, he’s nineteen and drives a mean yellow sports car my father could see from afar as he pulled into the driveway way before the three I was expecting - it was lunchtime and I was “sick”
The woodstove fires were out so he came home to stoke -

Ah but this young man
Had already taken care of
That - and when the door opened!
My father’s tight face
Mortified me

Body and soul wrung dry for three decades or more.

They still make those ******* cars.
I just saw one drive down the street
Of my midlife crisis afternoon walk.
My father gone a long time now -
my mother just last week touting as her inheritance! What she shamed me
So very thoroughly for
Then, so
I won’t ask her if she remembers.

My father turned swiftly and fled,
letting my mother fail to handle it.
Boys will be boys.
Girls mustn’t be *****.
He was always proud of me.
She still tells me how I’m doing it wrong, but I just laugh because I know
She doesn’t even own
A *******.