Burn After Reading

Originally published one day before I had my first subscriber.

I fell in love early. And often.

Call me foolish.

In those day the orchard blazed, and 
you blazed with it, ripening under a 
watchful sun, child of the harvest, 
hard, round and sweet—firm, but 
still capable of being bruised.

So white and so American, a stranger 
to worry or want or war.

And I, so young when first we met,
a blanket of green covering your 
rough lands, a white cloud that 
makes the sky seem pure by its 
absence.

We were quiet in the marshy parts, 
through the waterworks, beyond 
fingers of land stretching out to sea 
and to rocks that met the sky where 
seabirds circle.

We cried out our hallows against 
cathedral walls as penance and the 
nine billion names of God heard us.

You never knew what it meant, this 
feeling of attachment that went 
deeper than friendship.

There was a yearning in it, a soft cry 
swallowed in a distant night, a 
sudden turning from comfort to 
sweat.

It was foolishness that led me to 
keep notes hidden away, notes 
containing plots, scenarios, 
interrogatories, and admissions 
whose meaning could not be 
explained when Father found them.

Still, I was young and even with 
desires, unwanted, misunderstood,
there was time enough for change, 
time enough and fear enough to 
learn.

Burn after writing.