First Love, Summer 1977

By Ann Weil

                

I stole the dress—red polka dots on white—

from the clothesline in a stranger’s side yard,

because I knew how the skirt would flare as

I spun across the dancefloor at Gilley’s,

how one black spaghetti strap would let go

leaving my shoulder bare and beckoning,

and Eddie Briggs unable to resist

planting kisses across collarbone, nape,

and then—in the backseat of his Pinto

he’d make his way one red dot at a time

from bosom to waist, finally resting

his head in my lap, passed out from Boone’s Farm

on an empty stomach, and I rocked us

gently, like the children we’d never have.