where to go. From a Guanajuato summer class, my
Spanish got me through arrangements, but I couldn’t
catch their talk about the fetus’ age, which might have
mattered. I had broken with a boyfriend, coupled just
once with my guitar teacher. When I told my ex, excited –
it was a novelty, at 19 – he took out a calendar to count
himself out. That splashed me down. So I left it at that,
left having left him, alone. Left for the southern border.
I don’t recall panic crossing alone, looking for the clinic.
I don’t remember pain, or bad dreams after. Did I quit
guitar then, or just let it fade from my life over time?
I didn’t swear off sex, but a long time passed before…
I can’t remember feeling very much. Numb, perhaps.
I carried on as Avenue Cinema candy girl and student,
immersed in those volatile times, seeming unburdened.
Then followed a backseat ride across the Bay Bridge
on some friend’s Harley – to North Beach, I suppose.
It was windy, but not cold. San Francisco cool. But a
shiver ran through me as if each cell wall contracted.
I grasped gut-deep, like a knock-out, that someday
I’d have to die. Childhood’s golden circle splintered.
