why did you leave?

Maybe it was because I went to prom
with a boy and I did not pull back when
he took my hand. “What am I doing”
questioned the autotuned voice
of Drake in my head but I did not stop.

Then a few months later I kissed a boy.
This time Lil Wayne advised me to stop it.
Curiosity, not love, led me to
keep going back to this new boy’s basement.
We parted when he went back to college
and I had mission work waiting for me.

The first few weeks I slept in my new bed
in the converted nun’s dormitory
Kanye West cried “Satan, satan, satan”
in my dreams to show who I really was.

Yoshika Wason is a Boston based teacher who is currently residing in Japan for a sabbatical of sorts. She is a former editor in chief ofASIAM, an Asian Pacific Islander American literary magazine, at Boston College. Read her chapbook Extra Bold and other work here: https://yoshikawason.wordpress.com/.