I couldn’t have been
much older than Scout when
I asked my teacher
the same question she asked Calpurnia.
It was my teacher’s tradition
to read his third grade class
To Kill a Mockingbird
because it was his favorite book, and
we’d understand it better later.

Time passes, things change.
I learn, and
I grow.

I was fifteen when I learned how to burn.
I didn’t do it myself,
so I thought it didn’t count—
at least not in that respect.
I mistook a boy for a man and—
“He didn’t know what he was doing,”
is how I would explain it away with downcast eyes.
I’d leave out the grotesque visions of my bloated body
blooming into his fingers
as he twisted and clawed.
(i didn’t want to write this—oh—
i can feel it now.)