Momma always asked me why I never went out with nice boys with shiny shoes.
She didn't understand why I liked the ones who looked like Gypsies or rock stars.
The boys who pressed hard against me in the dark, breathing their secrets into me.
I like the boys with hungry eyes that licked me like flames, the boys with tattoos and wild habits.
I liked the boys who drove too fast, racing with the midnight stars, the boys who got me drunk and purred in my ear like stray cats.
I liked the boys with apartments by the railroad tracks, whose steaming locomotive heat devoured me on crumpled sheets.
The boys with guitars and too tight blue jeans.
Momma wnated me to marry a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, a tepid lukewarm boy with degrees.
She didn't understand I was smoldering inside, an incandescent quiet flame burning in the night.
Dyan Brown