Please don’t think 
any less of me, 
she says, because 
of what’s she done
and to whom,
and I don’t.
Questions of history 
rarely concern the past.
She touches me
this way because 
someone told her 
it felt good once.
It takes a lifetime 
to know how to touch
another human being. 
Babies begin by grabbing
any finger pointed at them,
mother’s or murder’s.