I was eight, these girls we're ten and twelve. Taller than both of them I was their toy, if you get my drift.
I was told we were going to play house, I would be the dad. I followed their every direction to a tee.
To this day I can't recall their roles. I hate to think that I was exposed to polygamy at such a young age.
We played in those boxes every day after school.
I would disappear into these moist cardboard caverns and come out gasping for breath, never complaining.
With the rains of May our Pied de Terre became a perilous love nest.
One afternoon I showed up ready to play my role and to my dismay Farah's mother had crushed the boxes and with it our love affairs.
I sulked for what seemed to be a hundred years but actually it was a few weeks.
Summer broke out and school let out.
My octogenarian neighbors four houses to the right of me had two granddaughters, they would visit every summer.
One of them would stay in all the time and keep busy with coloring books and dolls, her name escapes me.
Pilar was the prettiest of the two and the first girl to kiss me in such a way that my hair stood in attention, I'll never forget her name.
I think Yamilet might have had a loose conversation over a cafe con leche with Pilar about my recently acquired skills in the cardboard harem.
Somehow I ended up locking lips with Pilar in the back of a newly constructed garbage can enclosure across the daycare center.
Kissing sessions between Pilar and Yamilet became my summer, they would arrange it.
Farah's being away En La Escuela del Campo, made this easier. She had turned thirteen in June, she was my oldest girlfriend at the time.
Summer ended and I was learning at a young age that women decide and man just play the role.
A few months later I would be on a boat north bound to America leaving my innocence behind.
The young life of a poet...
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