LOCH BAILLIE

Wanna Play?

I learned the word sex avoiding games
of kickball. Kissing, watching rough-
lipped men and rouged women on TV.
I watch him crush cans of pop. Reel
in a fish. Darken in the lake. He plays
video games. I lie on the floor next to him
damply, agnostically. The raspberries
on the path between our cottages look
like heads holding their breath. I hold
mine in his bedroom. There’s an oppress-
iveness about a boy’s bedroom, about
his dirty underwear kicked under the bed
and the comic books traded for army
men. I loved when he watched me:
voyeurism by daylight. I would take
out my great-grandfather’s bow
and shoot the arrow straight over enemy
lines. Watch my father salt leeches before
they could deconstruct the stony bastions
keeping us apart. The truth is our parents
carry their big hearts but never teach us
how to carry our own. The truth is boys
have been my favourite and most un-
generous teachers. Please give me
a bloody nose so I can feel unlucky
just once. Do I want violence
or enlightenment? The first time I fell
in love, I felt like a zoo animal set on fire
in its cage. The first time I had sex I felt
guilty, because love was out of the question.
In my wettest dream, the boy pulls off
his board shorts and shows me how bodies
happen. In that dream we are also trees
that can only be felled by waking. Last night,
I dreamt I was in the middle of the lake
in a red canoe, and the loons traded
their voices for ours. They asked over
and over and over again: wanna play?
wanna play? wanna play? And I did.

 “Wanna Play?” will appear in River Running copyright © 2026 by Loch Baillie. Reprinted by permission of Goose Lane Editions. For more information, please visit http://www.gooselane.com.