Addie

I'm nineteen going on dead. Don't ask
where I went wrong. I couldn't tell you.
One day I turned fifteen and then in no time
I was passing my prime, like the freight train
that streaks across Johnson Road.
No one wants an old woman.

There was the boy from Beaumont
who passed through in June.
And Kitty's cousin Dan.
They smiled and rolled up their sleeves,
the sun glinting in their hair—
and each time I thought I might go
to Hell just for feeling. I did
everything I could think to do,
but in the end they went their way.

Something about me was wrong,
and I didn't know what to fix.
Now it's too late.