In A Moment

When I was eleven
My classmate Alex Day
Brushed a lock of hair from my forehead
And tucked it gently behind my ear.

The unexpected intimacy of that moment
Dropped my gut.
As a girl
In pre-pubescence I ached

For touch
And was ashamed
Of the hunger
I so privately bore.

And what if.
What if I had known
That this longing
Was not unique?

I can’t say
That it would have changed me.

Years later
I learned to feed my yearning
With hollow caresses
With stranger’s tarnished hands.

            Then, as if methodically, I learned to forget.

In my twenty-fourth year,
I remember

The innocence of eleven
And the way a moment of tenderness
Took me by alarm.