Seventeen [POETRY]

I was seventeen and he was a decade and nine.

Face cupped by royal-blue fingers, drowning

the rebel-red of wine;

Curtains drawn, a blackened sun, artificial lights:

Slightly yellow, tainted lime.

And on that bed, rumpled sheets, a twist of limbs and bones:

Arms, and legs, and feet, and face, and kiss, and nails,

And punch, and moan; and a tap, a tap like the march of feet,

The pierce of rain, picking speed, voice now higher, and sterner,

And saying NO, NO, NO

And a dizzy, spinning world, all blurred: eyes and nose and

ears smashed and lost to oblivion, noise all silent now

All static now except that NO, NO, NO

And I was seventeen, seventeen like dreams and prom,

And tests, and cakes, and Soju and rebel-red wine,

I was seventeen and he was a decade and nine.