Spelling Book

It was one of those cheap

things from the eighties, a book

about spelling with watery blue

ink, thin, it’s pages made

of cheap paper where you

could see the pulp, graying,

thinning, the eighties, young me;

I stashed it in a juniper bush

tucked it deep, into those

fragrant places between the

branch, and the shade like a 

secret, like a blush, I planned

to retrieve it the next day, on

the way to school; Having it

found by foreign hands changed

my plans, having it found

by a stranger’s smooth and  

moral hand changed

everything about me.