LESSONS

Sometimes the young girls

stare at my ear, focusing

on the right lobe, the one

I had pierced in the mall

during a break from my job

at the local theater in 1985. 

They gape in utter disbelief,

genuinely amazed that this
geriatric man before them, the 
one who teaches them grammar,

red pencils their essays,

and admonishes them not to 

eat in the classroom could ever 

have committed an action

as edgy as piercing an ear.   

What they fail to realize is that

there were other actions, far

edgier, that they will never know

about, that are not nearly as visible

as the decades-closed hole

that, much like the memories of

these other transgressions,

is now nothing more than

a shadowed indentation

in my rapidly aging flesh.