Church Camp

by Audrey Elledge

You wake at dawn and sit among the shining things: 

straightener, Lip Smackers, eyelid glitter. 

Peach deodorant. The smear of sunrise.

You have an appointment at the edge of the

sea. He texted, meet me in the morning,

so you leave your lanyard and slip from your bunk, 

all thin hips and thick desire. Girlhood still marks you:

you’ve never razored your shins,

you’ve never bled like a woman.

And yet here you are, in shorts that don’t pass 

the fingertip test,  letting him press

a seashell against your unpierced ear.

What rises is akin to what you felt during 

last night’s worship: dizzy, 

euphoric, self-conscious. But isn’t this holy too?

You first worry about the sand on your lip balm,

about the monastery of your one-piece.

You fret about your friends

and can hear Megan say it’s not holy to 

kiss before marriage. Classic Megan. 

For a long time you’ve imagined the nearness of lips, 

of paired faces crashing against each other like these waves

in hushed light. Then the air trembles,

and you’re not touching, because if you did 

you would shatter. Instead, you wonder at the veins

in his neck, at Old Spice mixed with heat,

at the otherness of Adam’s apples. Now isn’t this holy too,

you think, isn’t it right to be fourteen?

The shore heaves and you marvel at being chosen, 

at being plucked from the soldered ring of girls, 

at the red flush you can startle from him, at your own 

new body quickening a pulse, at your power inherited from Eve, 

at your ability to rouse a sleeping man,

and now isn’t this holy too