Is it my turn to use them?

I asked, in doe-eyed chin up hopefulness –

 

Not yet, replied father-fuhrer.

Maybe tomorrow.

 

I never really got a chance to play

with them – they were under lock and key

behind the rum, above the crackers

 

They were shiny, mysterious, like magic:

twinkly, yet smooth of wooden grain.

The smell of pipe and strawberry always

floated about them, then remained.

 

Daddy and Sissy didn’t know that

I took them out one day.

 

I snuck them out and ate of them –

skinned each one by lascivious one

with my devilish, thorny, rasping tongue –

 

Young me, shoved them in my pants;

cried upon their backs:

 

I love you, Dancing Faerie Queen!

I love you, Freddy Mercury!

 

Bored stare and low resolution glint

flickering in their multi-faceted

eyes of diamond cut me through – and through

 

Like they had somehow

seen this coming out of others before me,

like none of this was new –

 

Still, I behaved.

Promised never to break their arms

and their legs apart

 

Nor to paint their semi sweet

ribbon mouths lipstick and shut. Or

rip their necks out, like sluts.

 

But Daddy knew.

Daddy and Sissy knew.

I don’t know how, but they knew.

 

Didn’t whip me, but bore me a silence; their fear

of me almost worse than their ignorance.

 

I gave it away in my guilt leaden eyes;

rode astride a glimmer-wave of hope.

That’s how they knew I was all shiny new.

 

I didn’t cry over so many

little things after.

For I had witnessed,

had learned their secrets –

 

With blouses open I tasted them as

tarts and berries entranced with

a sexual elixir toward heaven,

or hell – who cares for the compass!

 

And I loved them.. It was worth

all my lives prior or none in the future –

 

It was even worth

trading away, in an unplanned way,

my family.