The Only Lily I Ever Saw

 

She was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen 

and she terrified every adolescent bone in my body.

Her mother fixed her hair in pigtails every morning,

drenched in hairspray until it dried and stiffened

and she became a stem of lilies 

sticking out of the very ground God walked on.

Lily was her name. 

She told me she liked the way I never fixed my hair,

or tied my shoelaces tight enough, 

and that I wore my brother’s shirts and pants.

I played kickball with the boys 

and slid through the dirt into the bases. 

I like the smell of dirt, she said, cheeks becoming roses.

I like the way you laugh like a boy, and you talk like a boy, and play like a boy, and you walk like a boy.

But most of all, 

I like the way you are not a boy at all.