Homecoming

At the high school football game, the boys stroke their new muscles, the girls sweeten their lips with gloss that smells of bubblegum, candy cane, or cinnamon. In pleated cheerleader skirts they walk home with each other, practicing yells, their long bare legs forming in the dark. Under the arched field lights a girl in a velvet prom dress stands near the chainlink, a cone of roses held between her breasts. Her lanky father, in a corduroy suit, leans against the fence. While they talk, she slips a foot in and out of a new white pump, fingers the weave of her French braid, the glittering earrings. They could be a couple on their first date, she, a little shy, he, trying to impress her with his casual stance. This is the moment when she learns what she will love: a warm night, the feel of nylon between her thighs, the fine hairs on her arms lifting when a breeze sifts in through the bleachers, cars igniting their engines, a man bending over her, smelling the flowers pressed against her neck.