Lewis Carroll wanted to fuck Alice

and it took a half decade to realize Coach
wanted to fuck me. A half decade to whittle

the lodestone of truth until it resembled still water
in a Marriott pool. I was swimming when he asked

Come to my room? That bitter divorcee and vestigial
I love you and an age gap of thirty years

inside a third space of a third space. Now, post-hoc,
come his excuses. Child fantasy, not pedophila—

so says Lebailly and Leach of Carroll, too.
The truth is as we watched Memento in bed

his hand walked up my thigh. The truth is
the real Alice Liddell posed naked as her eponym

burnt like a trusted adult and the brightline
between assaulted and abused is a muzzle.

Fourteen-year-olds can’t consent but Coach promised
You’re more mature than any other teenager.

Now I pot milkweed sprouts in empty pill bottles.
Alice steps into iridescence. Time hatches memory

like a caterpillar hatches into gangrene.

Byron Xu studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indicia, Lammergeier, Apricity Magazine, Scud, and elsewhere. He is an ordained minister and an atheist, and believes in the theodicy of anxious things.