Girl in a bath towel

     

   

December 15, 1972

She knocks on my door

With nothing on

But a bath towel

The nipples of her small breasts

So hard I can see them

Sticking like bullets 

Through the terry cloth

A pale reflection

of me in my jeans,

a stunned unintentional voyeur

though I have seen her

from time to time

slipping naked from bathroom

to her room down the hall

a burglar hoping someone

might steal her virginity,

telling me as she shivers 

in the hall’s hefty drafts

that she locked herself out 

of her room this time,

and asking if she can use mine

until someone, anyone later

might tell the landlord 

to come up with the spare key,

her large dilated eye

begging me to take her in

just as she is taking me in,

She, 18, and on her own

For the first time in her life,

While I’m still aching

Over the whole life

I’ve already lived at 22,

Caught between two conflicting 

Types of pain,

My knees trembling 

As if I’m the one naked in the hall

As if I’m the one who needs her

To take me in, swallow me up

And make me feel whole again,

Me, desperate to tear away 

The imaginary bath towel

I wear,

Until we are both equally naked

Until we are both whole again.