My First
By Miguel Martin Perez
You had me wait
in the dark: bathrooms,
closets, underneath bedframes,
breath hidden in pillows.
I learned early to hide
for touch, learned early
to crave, to wait, mislearned
early, love as pining,
taken, nonreciprocal.
At seven, behind thick doors
or in the shower, unlocked.
Ten, in apartment building
storage rooms. Thirteen,
after late movies, your sister
having fallen asleep beside me,
you unbuttoned my pajamas.
Fourteen, desperate: you
kept me incapable
of fantasizing anyone else.
My final prayer to God,
as I counted the snores
till I could sneak to your room,
to your grown body
and its apathy,
I prayed – Dear God, please
please don’t let me
like him, please
God, please – fuck – keep me
normal, God, I beg you –
to nothing.
Tiptoed into your open lap
to please god, to please
with more daring, bolder,
with mouth, with a love that
could at least seem older.
Sixteen––deeper, you
took my breath in your palm,
plunged my soul right out, tried
to take me as I bent below
the crack under the door,
lookout. I told you no,
no, I haven’t done this.
You respected that,
at the very least. Still,
I’d never heard you
laugh before.
Miguel Martin Perez (he/him) is a queer, Afro-Latino, Dominican-American poet who grew up in Harlem and the South Bronx. A recent MFA graduate from the University of California in Riverside, he currently resides in Los Angeles. His work appears or is forthcoming in Beyond Words and Riddled with Arrows.