J is for Justin

For years I’ve been meaning to tell you—

that midnight in the parking lot

on Meeting Street—when you asked me

to spend the night with you, I hesitated

because it was a question I had never considered

and because at the time I was a virgin but

I wasn’t a virgin, so I led you to the front bedroom

with fake lace on the window and wrestled

with the question until

we finally accomplished the act.

When I told you that I looked at the world

through a series of dim window panes

and flat screen TVs—and you gave me another hour

of comfort—I was trying to tell you

I was a virgin but I wasn't a virgin.

A virgin who smoked and played

cards and spat like a sailor.

The Virgin Night-Walker.

The Virgin of Copper Hood Ornaments.

A daughter of darkness with a harem

of young handsome men and a smart alley cat

who disemboweled crows as a token of love.

I was a virgin but I wasn't

a virgin. A virgin like Mary

of Sorrows, pierced through the heart

with the seven sharp swords of her suffering.

Fierce as the virgin of the hunt or

the gray-eyed virgin of warfare

and wisdom, who emerged like a fully-formed thought

from the cracked skull of her father. I was a virgin

and I wasn’t a virgin. Locked in my flesh like an animal.

Angry as a gargoyle on the roof of a church.