Brigham Young Ate Our Love

My Mormon girl in the long, dowdy skirt

reads Japanese comics at her desk

and tucks my note in her button-down shirt,

then guiltily sighs when she kisses my neck.

She will be moving to dry, rusty Utah

and leaving me here in the brumal woods.

Someday she’ll actually make it to Asia 

on some holy mission, all righteous and good.

But for now she’s still at Sapphic sixteen,

afraid of church boys in their clip-on ties.

Giggling at how I’m so coarse and obscene,

she slaps my hand away from her thigh.

I tell her that we are just friendly friends

I tell myself that this isn’t a lie.

(2013)