Amanda Leal     Lake Worth     (Craig Ryan)
Portrait at Seventeen

The first time we kissed, my shirt 
came up in the wind like the bell
of a flower, my belly soft and white 
as meringue. Not yet touched by anorexia, I glowed
in the sunlight that came down like a sheet 
over our bodies, my pink hair that invited bumblebees
to orbit my ear, the hands of my first girlfriend
at the valley of my waist. I could not have loved my self
better: the way I swam in my own skin on a bed
of crabgrass, as I shed my family, forgot 
the cadence of shame, islands of freckles 
on my shoulders, giving to my body exactly 
what my body wanted, the climbing vines 
of my hands wandering blindly, my hips that bowed 
and sank, curved like blown glass.