I’m a liar,
he offered on our first date,
as we trudged hand in hand
through sliding sand on Alameda Beach.
Naked toddlers squatted
over half-dug holes,
wielding plastic shovels.
Teenagers played frisbee
and wrote their true loves’ names
in wet sepia with a stick.
Easily done, easily erased.
The sun lay a lascivious tongue
along the blond hairs of my arm
and burned our cheeks a deeper red.
Aging children, that’s all anyone is.
But you gotta love us.
There’s no one else to love.
So I didn’t believe him.
I lied
to myself that he’d be faithful,
when clearly his gaze was already turning
some other way.
It’s just that today,
in the hot stillness
of late summer, the breeze comes up
and caresses me as softly
as it did when I was a girl.
Then my skin
remembers the touch
of his warm skin
and his eager, silky penis,
which, in its own way, was always honest.