--- M A R I S S A   R A N E L L O -V A C H E R E S S E

When you disappeared when I was thirteen,
I felt like an abandoned bicycle with training wheels
sent off the to far corner of the damp basement.

That same summer, I thumbed through the dictionary
to decipher the pornography of Miller, and purchased
my first Japanese slingshot, a tripe 'A'  brassiere.

I cried when you would sneak me gifts through
my bedroom window, and cursed my own mother,
until the same dictionary defined adultery.