"A girl remembers"

All I remember,
she tells me,
my little sister, on the threshold of womanhood,
is the sound of her voice.
We were playing a game, and then she called us outside.
We didn’t want to leave.
I remember her face, too. I can’t describe it. But I remember it,
you know, the way you remember things from back then.
In fragments.


"A girl remembered"

I cannot say for sure the first time we met,
Or where I first saw you. I am confident, now,
I would not have noticed you at the time. You
Were simply too young, still all frost and dew.
Though even then, one could see, were they
being open and honest, that lurking beneath
lines just beginning to bend, a face not yet
acclimated to its momentary bursts of beauty,
was a woman of breath stopping poise, and
grace.
The detachment, was there, too, pulled up
so it was almost translucent. The indifference,
and the scything temper. But that was still far off,
mostly opaque. What was most startling were the
flashes of womanhood, the dimple of your chest
and the way you played with your smiles, tried
to learn which one fit which occasion: here is
sympathy, like a lake in rain; here is gentle reassurance,
like a mother watching her child read his first book
(this one, I think, you perfected most on me); and
here is flirtation, like a trellis of autumn elm leaves
fluttering down around a dinner party (this is the one
I choose to remember you by, because beneath the
writing, I am only male).
Now, the girl is in retreat.
She is still there, of course, in fits of laughter after
too much beer, and the way you still hold a cigarette -
you try much too hard to look dainty and seductive.
But mostly, she is gone. You are rigid and taut,
reflexively guarded. This is the proper course, after
all, and I admire the wisdom you have accrued. But
I see you now, and think the world brought you into
my sight too soon. A few years - given either to our
meeting, or taken from my life - and we might have
pried the other open until we fell apart, clear as a
stream in spring. But time cannot be bent, at least not
in hindsight. I remember your girlish mouth beneath
the woman; you feel my lascivious eyes, betraying the man.