the sunwarmed stone singes the long-dormant nerves in my adult fingers and suddenly I
remember what pear trees used to smell like in June,
as backyard swing rope burns emerge on my inner thighs underneath my slacks
and sweat cooled by dusk on the back of my neck.

the heat accumulated over years of summers
is my loss of virginity too, and I realize now that pear trees
in August smell like ***,
like sweat and shame.

there is a handful of jolly ranchers and pack of cigarettes
on his bedside table,
to which, afterwards, he says, "take what you want"
and I wish that I could as freely as he took me,
but I am no longer angry at men for this because
I know I could just as easily have done the same.

we all have to decay somehow,
after the pleasure like candy we take from each other
and **** out of the earth to consume in glut,
and after suffocating each other with our selfishness --
what more appropriate fate than sugar and smoke?

so hesitantly I take one of each to his balcony and do my penance,
and hear him come up behind me to take my hips into his palms
and when I feel sick I think about my mother's pear tree,
despite its history and crimes still flowering every spring.