My first for the Writer's Digest challenge

The prompt: "Origins." Feel free to interpret the prompt loosely, they said. So I wrote the title and then all the rest of it in one go. Tinkered with line breaks. That's it.


Where Babies Come From

That was, in fact, a roll of dimes in his Haggar pocket
at the junior prom. They both came stag,
after talking it over at the youth group. He bruised her thigh
doing the bump to “Brick House.” She didn’t know for three days.

He tore her dress when the music changed
to “Shout” and his size 13 caught the hem. Apologized right then,
mid-hop, said it wouldn’t happen again. Hands flung high,
half-transported, half worried about the whitish stains
of stick deodorant, they knew themselves
to be making memories. They did not do the Gator.

By the punch bowl, sweating, sucking their ice
like a menthol balm, they talked about
Anderman’s pop quiz on Vietnam. Was it a war,
or just a criminal possession? Would they ever get out?
Would the horrors ever come east, to Oregon, to home?

In Eileen’s basement, a half-giddy impromptu party.
Spin the bottle. His lips did not open. She felt
the shock of tongue from Bobby, the guy in the science lab
who fed the snake, the golden hamsters, the fishes.