I remember falling down
the basement stairs. See the scars?
My mother saying be careful
of small dogs,
as if there were still room
to borrow trouble.
The view through
the screen door, four lanes
of spinning hubcaps.
In our living room, lived
only the piano.

I learned to rub
my hands along its curves
as if it were my body,
flatten keys to make
the most dissonant of chords,
the very sound that brought you
out of the city, running
from life on a street
I could not imagine.
You, the very thing
my mother feared too much
to even mention.

You were sex,
and it was sex that saved me.
Like a fast car
I drove out of my childhood.
Like a rocket
I took to leave the planet
I was born on, frozen world
where no one ever
touched me. And you ask
if I regret it?
See the earth below us,
cold blue pebble-
the past is nothing
but a bed I used to sleep in,
little and alone.
In space, my fallen angel,
gravity is you.

© Jesse Lee Kercheval