Dear Billie-by Christine Cassidy
Dear Billie,
I'd offer apologies
for flirting at the party
but I know what you'd say-it's
not all that necessary-
and besides,
I'm enticed, your cool minx eyes
assessing me the way I've
come to enjoy. Why didn't
you, at the end, kiss me? I'd
have given
you skirt, not to flirt. Then
I saw you, whispered in your
nappy hair, smiled a lot, and
had to touch.
Why is it you're the one butch
-my new lover won't say much-
who feeds me information
from the hand, and won't begrudge
my hunger
for knowing somewhat better
whom I've been lusting after
-granted I'm a little late,
a shy date-these last few years?
Fourteen now,
since I've been comfortably out.
Longer, if you count Girl Scouts,
the woman whose flint-lit fires
kindled mine. I stayed closemouthed
about sex,
watched the playground mavericks
pick out sides while I grew breasts,
lip-synched to Janis Joplin,
and fantasized what came next.
That same thrill,
chasing after boyish girls
-rough girls with flaccid pigtails-
who swaggered off fields and courts,
has gotten me in trouble
more than once.
When I wore a cocktail dress
(another time, only lace)
to seduce the dykes in suits
at Seven Sisters dances,
I wish you
had been there with your etudes
of history, tales accrued
not from books. Sea Colony
stories circa '62
my favourite:
at twenty you learned the gait
and gaze that femmes would covet.
You stroked my knee, reminisced.
I thought, does femme etiquette
permit one
bite into your neck, or none?
You laugh at my abstention
and my burn to know just what
you butches want, how and when.
You say I
couldn't take what's on your mind.
What's on mine might terrify
you more. Or is this coax
you expect, or will you try
to please me
when I visit? If you feed
me raisin scones and stories,
I'll reply in kind-naive
but willing, my dear Billie.
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