Krystal & Kali
I was in second and third grades.
She had a tanner skin that somehow in my memory fades
into a definite gold.
Her demeanor was much more ignorant. Her approach, much more bold.
She wanted me to kiss her the way the high-school kids kissed.
It seemed to me that a kiss is a kiss. Was there something I’d missed?
In Krystal’s house, hung a large painting of a naked woman.
Right there in the living room, along with a Buddha and a shaman.
I felt a thrill in the atmosphere of shameless sin.
Krystal was my neighbor. My cohort. Near kin.
She wanted me to explain why Jesus was such a big deal to us.
“I mean, we do Christmas and Easter but, why all the fuss?”
She and her brother and sister had a tendency to curse.
They also were prone to make statements that none of us couldn’t trust.
Mister Mike was her father, the owner of their haphazard farm.
A bunch of strange animals that seemed to want to cause children harm.
He was this larger-than-life man with the darkest skin.
He shouted in my general direction once: “I ain’t your paw! And I ain’t your friend!”
She wanted me to say she was my best of all the people.
I told her I’d marry her if she wanted me to. But it wouldn’t be for a while.
She wanted to wear a bright red dress and take vows up in the steeple.
I said “red’s fine with me if it’s good for you.” I think that was what made her smile.
Mister Mike owned race horses.
We never went to the races at Evangeline Downs.
Funny, the alterations of courses.
Strange, how life offers varied trials. Time-molded crowns.
Krystal is out there living her life.
Likely, she is acting in ways she was taught and trained toward.
I hope she is a God-fearing man’s wife.
I’m afraid she never thought much about the security found in trusting in The Lord.
They were our neighbors.
The folks who lived nearest us and made their presence known.
They were unclean and impure.
A glimpse for sheltered church kids to behold a world un-shewn.
Home and the neighborhood were worlds apart
From the school I went to all day everyday.
I was in second and third grades. But I was still at the start.
There was a girl at school. “I love you” is what she had the gall to say!
This girl was a year ahead of me and as far as I could see,
Even if it was true love, the age difference would never let it be.
Her skin was a radiant white glow.
She had freckles from head to toe.
So, does that make me a player? The fact that I had two girls on the mind,
whether or not either of them would capture me...
I knew Krystal was exquisite. But Kali had something about her I needed to find.
Time would decide that neither were for this man to ever marry.
It haunts me to this very day however. The way Kali so boldly made her claim.
I was just a boy and had never known anybodies love save Moms, Dads.
That instant when she looked into my soul as she said it, I felt a purity of shame.
It seemed that love was a threat. I may need a helmet, a mask, knee-pads.
She, the paler of my women, would in time resurface as a haunt or a taunt.
She had somehow, with that phrase, captured a knowledge of what I really want.
She has removed herself from my acquaintance much to my relief.
But she always hid little hints to the fact that she holds the key to my utmost grief.
I told that Kali-kat once when we were in our high school years,
“I’d rather to know you were mine then, are mine now, and always will be mine,
and yet go through life without you. Too much pain, too many tears.
To hold you in my sights in my last few years, and share smiles, would be just fine.”
Krystal, bless her heart, she said some things and gave me looks.
But those three treacherous words in that fateful order, Kali sort of took the cake.
Krystal had a raw natural foolish type of attraction. One for the books.
Kali knew a phrase that would charm even the most venomous snake.
I’ll love to see the way God plays my life out!
Whether I ever even see either of my childhood crushes again.
But if it was a contest to see who won my heart, let there be no doubt,
Kali stole my heart with her crafty flirt.
I closed my eyes and pursed my lips to kiss her.
She laughed insultingly and tugged at my shirt.
When I wanted to please her
she’d treat me like dirt.
What a lover!
I feel that I can never cover
the shame she has flooded upon me.
The sound of her name somehow makes me free.
