On The Barn Roof With a Boy
You know, I don’t remember
how we got there, the top
of the barn roof, but I remember
jumping off into what was
soft and tall, heads and humps
of green and gold grass out near
where we’d stake our cow.
Time after time we’d climb
(to be honest it was a small
barn, two stalls and a crawl
space really for a ten hen
coop)
Climb sit stand elbow jump
climb sit stand elbow jump
and there was this one boy I wanted
to impress but only so he wouldn’t
think I was like every other girl
on that roof. I liked thinking he was
my friend, like I was bad enough
for him, boy enough to jump.
Thinking back now though, I have
to say it was such a small barn, it was
nothing to jump from there. Too small
to even keep hay in. In winter I’d see
my father knock bale after bale
against his knee from the shed
attic to the barn, after he’d shovel
a long straight path to the door. And
how opening it a roll of warm air
would hover at his hips. And that attic,
though never that warm, and more often
empty than full or half, was my favorite
piece of dusty sun or moon, even in winter,
(though that barn roof in winter
was a different jump, up sometimes
to beneath my arms depending
on the drifts, and always soft.)
Maybe because there were stairs
and a sure way to get there
and it was quiet and away from down
stairs and the house I never could entirely
breathe in. And one night it was quiet
enough to hold hands, just hold hands,
with a boy I had a crush on, a boy
my age, while his father and my father
talked about guns and drank Seagrams 7
& water and we were under the roof
in winter and our feet at the end
of our legs hung out over the stairs.
And they seemed unhinged, unblooded.
But our hands were warm. I remember
saying we could never jump from here,
we’d only break our legs and what good
would that do
and we didn’t cry but we might have
if the night were long enough for us
if the whiskey held out,
after our fathers bought and sold
the only guns they loved running up
the barrel with, their oiled cloth
soft, a lowing in their throat,
a sound I’d come to know only
years later under the hands of a man
who knew about the pitch of roofs how
steep they need to be to keep up
winter after winter and he’d trace his finger
down my spine and turn me over
belly down and lift my hips and say
this pitch, yes this is the proper pitch.
I was young too young under the eves
of his skin. I was easy to jump off. I thought
again and again of that barn
while he climbed on, how brave I felt
knowing that tuff boy was watching me
back then all the while I lunged up and down
eight ten feet maybe, landing feet first,
into the hum and sting through my skin
and into my bones my hips my throat
the stomach stun hovering …
And I told him after he was done the first time
about the boy and me in the cold
in the empty attic how he kissed me
though today I don’t remember anything
about that kiss. I’ll tell you what I do
remember though: the smell of gun oil.
the sound of boots on stairs. The come down
from there right now what do you think
you’re doing.
We weren’t doing anything but holding
hands.
I see his dark head, that gentle boy, a
silhouette against the window, closed
for the coming snow, and how I know
I know without question, if we were
high enough, when we heard those steps
on steps, smelled that oil, we both, still
holding hands, would have jumped.
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