O Cache Luxurious by Lisa L. Moore

This is a summer memory: that’s why
my feet were bare. Helen’s head was round,
her forehead high and pale, her blue eyes meek.
Her English parents did not speak fluent
sunscreen, so that day her face, scarlet
and swollen, caused her pain. The goal back then
was burn, peel, bronze, suntan. My olive skin
tanned easily beneath my thick brown bangs.
A tan was said to be my one beauty,
so I was ungreased, unprotected too.

We had discovered treasure in the lane
behind her house: O cache luxurious!
Pale grey cement rectangles, no doubt
destined for construction in our raw
new neighborhood. Like toybox blocks, and free!
we thought. We’d build ourselves a playhouse.
Brick by brick, we carried what we’d need,
in four-year-old fingers, one girl on
each end, across the street and into my
backyard. We couldn’t mess up Helen’s yard,
we knew. Her parents were the only ones
scarier than mine.

          I used to start this story at the end,
when Helen dropped her side and broke my toe.
We grew up with injuries like this, and others,
mostly secret. As the harbor opens out
today on Pearl Street, the screen slides back.
I glimpse anew. We were making something,
fingers slipping, eyes on one another.



Lisa L. Moore is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, as well as the poetry chapbook, 24 Hours of Men. Most recently, her poems have appeared in Waxing and Waning, Nimrod International Journal, and Hairstreak Butterfly Review. She lives in Austin, Texas.