I Had a Wonderful Time, Didn’t I?
By: Loukia Borrell
One by Jacar Press
June 2024
Before, it felt like a good idea.
I wanted a man. I found a man.
I left home showered and shaved.
The mouth, mound, and breasts, ready.
My mother paced in her room.
Even during the layover in Texas,
she made one final, desperate call.
Just put her on another plane.
Don’t take her to your place.
He was firm with her.
She felt all his teeth.
I will send her home.
I will teach her first.
She will learn a man.
I did not return as I left.
I came back differently.
At the dinner table, I could
not look at my father and mother.
I sat near a phone that never rang.
Each day, she threw mail on the
kitchen table, silently spreading out
the envelopes. Nothing for me.
I turned into a pile of dull ashes
and died of thirst and hunger,
of recklessness and harm, so I
poured my incinerated body
into an urn, and settled on a shelf
in my childhood home, the Hunter’s
Moon a new suitor illuminating my shame.
