I remember the days of raisin boxes and paperbacks,
when it felt like the worst thing in the world to be climbing barefoot up a mound of dirt in the rain because you wanted a friend.
I couldn’t watch movies, talk about cigarettes, or listen to operas,
but I was all right when I saw my mother pouring out my father’s bottles into the bushes.
I looked at the round tummy in the mirror and wondered if it was okay.
It wasn’t. I was eleven years old when I learned how to **** it in.

-

The first came in middle school. I had a dream that I kissed a boy while on an exercise machine.
It was real life when he took my hand in the backseat of his mother’s SUV. I closed my bedroom door and danced.
I still think of him when I hear that stupid song.

The second time, I was fourteen. I met a different boy who peeled away my skin as if he were unwrapping a Christmas present.
And the present? Just another pair of socks. Throw them in the drawer with the others. Shut it tight.
I’m still missing a lot of skin.

And then, there is you.
You know the story. Five, four, three, two, one, happy new year. I kissed you.
Remember when you noticed my wrists? Remember when you didn’t believe my excuses? Remember afterwards, when you pretended to forget all about it because you were scared, scared of the kinds of girls who hid secrets under their sleeves?
I went to all of your basketball games. I hate basketball. We watched movies that you projected onto your basement wall. Your attempts to disguise your impatience as admiration were poorly executed.
Maybe our first kiss shouldn’t have occurred in a count-down. It made everything else that happened feel that much more inevitable.

-

I take stock of myself. Three hearts, like an octopus, and too much blood. I am saving it, I am saving it for the person who offers me something other than the dusty space under the bed.
I never want to be like my mother, and there is a certain kind of power in this. The power of - of what, turning inward?
I am learning. I am learning to stop looking behind me in fear of pursuit. Let them come and let them drape me in meaningless velvet. I will not be deterred.
Look for me, up in the constellations. I am a passing comet; it’s impossible to predict if I am destined for destruction or for greatness.

I’ll wait at the sunset for the sound of your voice.

There will come a time when we will be gone,
all of us
from this place.
We will take planes and buses and trains,
We will pack up our rooms and kiss mothers goodbye,
fathers clap our shoulders
and look us in the eye, tell us to stay out of trouble.
We will never be together, all of us, again,
in the same way, for we're always changing.
You know how people are.
-
This is how I can miss you.
This is why, though you are sitting with me now,
I feel the particular ache of your loss -
the knowledge that I will go months, years,
without hearing your voice.
And in a way, it is like someone has died -
like you have died, like I have died.
I know my memories will live on hideously,
growing greater and falser with time,
filling spaces and gaps in me
that you never really got to fill.
And yes, I will live on. But there will always be something:
a scratch on my wrist
a ghost on my neck
a deep, trembling silence.
-
If you asked me about graduation, this is what I’d say:
I am a river, you are the sea, and I will keep running to you,
even though the sea is chock full of water,
even though one river won't make much of a difference, anyway.

More and more I’ve been thinking about how you ruined me. Skinny little girl arms and legs and tummies and chests, being touched for the first time, just a little-girl-playing-big with a boy-who-was-already-big. I peeled off layer after layer until I lay in front of you, exposed, fighting the urge to cover myself with my hands because it was you, because I trusted you, more than I’ve ever trusted another person. I would have let you lead me into a burning building.

I always heard that there’s nothing like your first love. I never quite understood until recently. There was nothing like my first love because I put all of myself into it, into you, pressing myself into your hands, trusting that you would take care of me.

I didn’t know, until I was in another boy’s bed years later, him kissing up and down my neck, me feeling the first awful tickle of panic in my chest. I didn’t know, until he told me that he loved me, til I felt every muscle in my body tense up like I had run into a ******* war zone.

I didn’t know. I’ve broken up with every single boy since you. I didn’t know. I haven’t been above to love any of them right because of you. Because you ruined me.

There’s nothing like your first love, they said. And they were right. It’s been four years and I’m still trying to pry my heart out of his filthy hands.

She told my dad he was “kind of an *******”
the first time we had dinner with him,
at this place called The Pear Room
but she was disappointed that there were not only
no pear decorations, but that there was not a single dish
with a pear included. She ordered a dry martini
with three olives on a skewer,
but she never took one sip. She gulped.

She came at me like an avalanche in jean mini skirt.
I tried to run ahead of her, but she picked up speed
and tossed me right into her path with scratch marks
on my back to prove it. You’d never know it
by the way she twirls her hair into a bun at the top of her head
just to take her make-up off, how she laughs
instead of getting ******, or how she sometimes
orders her dessert before her meal, but she’s just a girl
who puts on her toughness in the morning like a slip.
She folds

her dollar bills into fourths before she puts them in her wallet,
and she strings herself like paper chains
against the sun every day as she drives to a job she hates.
She listens to Miles Davis on her record player,
asks me to dance at half past eleven on nights I need to sleep,
but I get up anyway. I pour us both a glass of Coke
and try to capture the reflection she doesn’t see of herself,
mirror it in my eyes, just so she knows that she
is not just another item on the menu.

The gentlest eyes
I have ever seen
but also, I think,
a bit fierce,
like a baby tiger.
Such an exquisite,
elegant contradiction.

   ~mce

Thinking now, I miss the late night talks about nothing.
I miss the late night talks about something.
I miss staying on the phone all night playing kingdom hearts.
I miss singing and dancing over skype wanting to never part.
I miss the unsecure security.
I miss your laugh, and I miss your crazy stories.
But most of all,
I miss the simplicity we once had.

The unlikely friendship we shared,
Until we found out we both cared.
I believe everything happens for a reason,
But what if our time has run?
What if it's only just begun?

Is this meant to happen, is it just fate?
Or is it time we closed the gate.
I don't know what path is right.
I'm just so scared to mess up this life.
I wish there was a manuel, or I could see into the future,
Maybe then I could make the suture.