“Coming of Age in America”

by Claire Hero

There were fires at night and the lure
of a high. We never went home.

Coins never burned in our pockets,
food never sullied our lips.

Behind houses we dressed and undressed
for the pageantry called Let Us Be Undone, O

Let Us Be. We fell in love
daily, but we never let it touch us.

We practiced walking with chips on our shoulders.
Our bodies never forgave us.

When K was raped in a bathroom, we never knew, we were
standing right outside the door. We laughed

every lunch hour, practiced sobbing into pillows.
When B swallowed pills we huddled

around his hospital bed, marveling
over his new liver. Our bodies? Never.

We wore the clothes of the dead,
painted our faces white. We never forgave.

On television, bombs burst, walls fell.
We knew all the jingles. We ducked, we dove.

We said “what I wouldn’t give.”
We did what we liked. We never stopped.