As Bad As

I couldn’t tell you now what possessed me, 
a quiet girl – mostly afraid of boys – to say 
goodnight to my parents, lock the door, 

open the window and shimmy down 
the pine tree. Those were cloudless nights, 
the stars so bright that every neighbour 

must have watched me run across the lawn 
and into the car at the corner, top down, 
a boy driver waiting with the radio blaring. 

We went back to the house where someone 
was watering plants for the week and drank 
more beer, laughing for hours until the boy 

delivered me home and I – alert now, almost 
sober with fear – tip toed through the fading 
dark to the base of my tree and looked up. 

The house was silent, my window still open, 
exactly as wide as I knew my mother’s mouth 
would be when she’d found out what I’d done.