Today's poem is by Kelli Russell Agodon

When I Was Straight
       

I thought everyone was easy
to love. The boys who brought me

bouquets of bluebells, the girls
braiding daisies into my hair at slumber

parties—the girls I couldn't tell.
When I was straight, I was mostly curved,

a windy road of fading firs, a sunset
on a dead-end street holding the Indigo

Girls in one hand and Elvis Costello
in the other. Remember how I always wished

to be Tom Sawyer, maybe for the raft,
maybe to be closer to the perfect

Becky Thatcher. Looking back, it's easy
to understand how I was in enchanted

with every pathway, how each exit was also
a possibility. Everyone is easy to love, I told him,

I told her, I told them—a garland of forget
-me-knots blooming around my waist.

Copyright © 2025 Kelli Russell Agodon All rights reserved
from When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton
Small Harbor Publishing
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission