I woke up one morning
and there they were,
strapped to my chest,
right over my raw, wild, unequipped
fourteen-year-old heart.


Some men came with a begging bowl.
Some leaned up against them, silently copping a feel.
Some squeezed roughly.
Some just wanted to pluck a grape.
Some asked first, some didn’t.
Some said their balls
would turn blue and fall off unless I
said yes, and I
believed them.


Hardly anyone has known what to do with them,
including me,
these soft flaps of flesh, loose as puppies,
heavy as history.
Two full moons trapped in nylon and spandex
that could have fed a baby but didn’t,
tucked into double-D underwire bras
purchased specially at Filene’s (my grandmother
paid for me to wear minimizers),
where elderly saleswomen admonished me
to “bend over from the waist, dear,
and shake yourself into the cups.”

It has all been too much
and yet not enough,
like life:
so much promised,
delivered somehow to the wrong address.
And yet I belong with them now
as they descend toward the earth
one warm handful at a time.