In the dream, you’re a teenager again, peeking through the Venetian blinds, watching the girls you once envied walking home from school in their plaid skirts and navy knee socks, and the cool boys from St. Joe’s driving slowly past in a tan Ford Pinto. You recognize BB with her thousand red curls, arm-in-arm with Cindy, her slender friend, their skirts rolled up so short, their legs as white and slender as stalks, and you think, Why can’t I join them?

but instead you remain inside behind the sitting-room window, there on the flowered loveseat, posing, your head turned, one eyebrow raised, feeling as if ants are running up your legs. Don’t move, the painter says. Please. And you don’t.

You look lovely, he adds, then brushes your hair back with his hand, arranging you just so, and suddenly he’s your ex-boyfriend, the creepy one who controlled your every move and proposed seven times, offering you gifts of jewels and trips to New York, calling you my little gal as he opened your adolescent legs. But why is he here now? you ask yourself as the afternoon light moves across your face, the potted plants, the blue walls,

as his paintbrush traces your cheeks, lips, breasts. You try to leave. You try to rise up and rush for the door—you can almost feel the street burning beneath your bare feet. But you can’t move. It’s too late. After all, this happened years ago. You were already his.

Nin Andrews

is the author of six chapbooks and six full-length poetry collections. Her most recent books include Miss August (CavanKerry Press, May 2017) and Why God Is a Woman (BOA Editions, 2015). Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Agni, The Paris Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry. She has won two Ohio individual artist grants, the Pearl Chapbook Contest, the Kent State University chapbook contest, and the Gerald Cable Poetry Award. She is also editor of a book of translations of the Belgian poet, Henri Michaux, Someone Wants to Steal My Name.

Author’s website: www.ninandrews.com