His first time,
he’d made love
with the wild woman
who lived
on the other side of days
in a house on a hill
with a cat;
she had green eyes
and a wicked laugh
and she glowed
like the moon
when he saw her;
he was bewitched
from the start,
and tumbled into
the all of it,
no matter the warning
from classmates
and mother
who waited for him
to come home
by curfew
those long late nights,
that seminal spring when
trees leafed early
and wolves howled
dawn and dusk,
while he, entranced,
carried with him
the spells he’d learned,
the secret language
traced along skin,
the memories
he’d keep like photographs
long after she disappeared.
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Photo by Olga Solo. Poem ©2026 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you’ll love my book SLEEPING WITH GHOSTS, on sale now at my Etsy Shop.
