Her list started in high school.  A black & white composition notebook,
clotted with ink, two or three until graduation. Her first year away
from home, the total jumped to seven, eight, maybe nine, depending
on who was saying.  The current total is fifteen. She takes pride in the number.

More languish on other lists, lesser trespasses and crimes of the tongue,
lips, teeth, slow fingertips. She flaunts her sexuality. She knows her power.
The natural hourglass of her ripe flesh, heartbeats pound like grains of sand
ticking down in readiness for the eventual life stirring inside her emptiness.

The ache deep inside and the knowledge that her body is designed for this one
perfect act of creation. Plastic cups clutched to chests as partygoers brush
past, hesitant fingertips against hips and soft surreptitious sin of skin.
Dizzy drunken nights blend to blurry blanketed figures in dawn-glow

as she travels home, sticky thighs and eyes crusted in day-old eyeliner.
Her stockinged leg goosebumps against the gusts of fall, combat boots
stride through leaves. A quiet key presses firmly into the lock. The
door parts gently, a soft breath as it brushes the air.

Sixteen.