Seventeen
I wish you were a boy
said my best friend,
our emancipation from magazines
fumbled beneath the rain.
We almost breathed desire
into the flash flood of adolescence.
We long knew the wanting
between us, which followed
us onto the city bus like a shadow.
We drifted through the long storm,
hovered at the edge of saying.
The contract of friendship
was cut from Seventeen,
taped to the wall, unpeeled
and stuck again with each sigh,
condensation on the window,
tossing at a sleepover, comparing
bodies as the only way to look.
My signature was firm on our
agreement until we left home,
at seventeen. Years later,
I am a mile from that dripping place—
home. My return offers memory
new life, brushing the space between
imagination and the real world.
I breathe her desire into
new life, one wish in a contract
fulfilled through my body,
here is the scene anew:
She said, I want to kiss you,
I heard, you will become you.
She is with a man now,
a boy, while I hold
the tenderness of rain,
slippery as memory,
hair heavy with the ache
of once girlhood.
Shir Lovett-Graff is a writer, interfaith nonprofit director, and community organizer based in New England. Their work often lies at intersections of queerness, religion, ancestry, and oceans. Recent publications include SEISMA Magazine, Silver Rose Magazine, EcoTheo Review, West Trestle Review, SWWIM, and more. They currently serve on the senior advisory council for Yetzirah: a hearth for Jewish poetry. Their website is shirlovettgraff.com.
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