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My mother's lover was lying
on the sofa between us
watching L. A. Law. It
was a soft sectional sofa
spread in two directions.
He lay in its crotch,
one arm around my mother,
the other around me.
Pulling a blanket over us,
he wrapped us together
like a family secret,
cuddled my ten year old body,
a body craving a father's warmth.
His long fingers
slid inside my panties
as casually as they might
have slipped under plastic
to feel a mound
of Golden Delicious.
He raised a tent with his knee.
So nice, my mother said,
to have a man in the house.
I willed myself still
as a statue of Mary
while he sampled me,
split my life in two
like a sectioned apple
exposed and left to spoil,
the crisp white edges of its flesh
rotting toward the core.
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