The boardwalk air tasted as sweet the ice cream on your tongue
You held my hand as we navigated through the fun house
Green shirts and green eyes glowing under fluorescent lights
It was then, under careful consideration, I was made yours.

Our children’s names are Evangeline and Jason
You let me pick night one
I was convinced, in my mind that you can’t handle, that those words were truth

My father’s rage was felt throughout the household
When you're young and you think you're in love you don't care
All I cared about
All that was on my mind was certainty and trust

Now, it’s not like I’m being delusional
A boy crazy crush that I never had a chance with
You were good with words
fed to me on a spoon with saccharine syrup
Fake sweetness filling me with lies
One spoonful of “I love you”
Another spoonful of “I won’t leave you if things get bad”

Things got bad

My skin parted like petals
emptying false hope onto the girl’s bathroom floor
My first thought
contained by blue paper scrubs
was to tell you that I loved you
It’s easy to think that when you're deflowered
petals rotting on a second hand couch in your parent’s basement

I waited
I wrote
I colored stupid pictures
using pencils I wasn’t supposed to have in my hospital room
I prayed every night
All was in vain
I suppose boys get put off
when girls make themselves bleed
instead of them making us do so

It all happened so fast

One week I was your latest obsession
Hands on my body as if attached with glue
You showed me off like a prize orchid
My petals were picked
Quickly, painfully
Until I lay bare before you
A flower is no longer beautiful
When colors and soft skin are stripped and tainted

I let you in
You got frightened
I stayed in the fun house
You ran back to normalcy

Space was needed
I could wait
I gave it to you while I paced the cold tile floor
Counting down the minutes until I could be in your arms again

The bus platform was our place
I saw you
Your stupid hat
your flannel
your tired green eyes
and though there were hundreds of other people there
none of them registered in my eyes but you

I had a plan
we could make things work, right?
After all I gave the mandated space
I also gave you the stupid coloring pages I made out of a concoction of boredom and saccharine love, on the nights my sleeping pills couldn't sedate me. So, every night.

I got a little bit of what I wanted though
The aforementioned embrace, yet not out of love but out of pity and guilt
Broken quickly, as if my love was a contagion you didn't want to catch

Stupid pictures in hand you left
You want no part of me
Yet you have every piece
Every petal

Io sono deflorata
Percio sono spine

Touch me like you need me
Like you needed me that night
You needed something that couldn't be lent
that couldn't be returned

Feel my hand
Merged with yours
sweaty and lustful
entwined with my fingers
as you claim me as yours

Grab my wrist with your razor fingers
empty my soul onto a ***** bathroom floor
and cling to it all the way to the hospital
On the ambulance ride
I see my mother and my father behind me
Two faded forms through the window
I sleep
I wake up hours away
from my home
from you

In my mind you are there
in my hands
in my heart
inside of me
bleeding out rapidly in a cold room
next to a girl twelve years of age
with cherry gashes up and down her arms

I know
I know that you are there
in my ****** poetry book
that I gave from stolen papers and crayons
Blood red
your favorite color
all over printer paper with hearts and cursive.

Know that I'm not yours
no matter how many times I write your name on my hand
Know that I'm not yours
no matter how many times I see you and my heart explodes
Know that I'm not yours
because I must get over myself
I must get over you
I must drown my thoughts with gin and diet coke
and write my ****** poetry with the marks of our past discretions on my neck and in my soul
I'm supposed to be taking notes about boring books and SAT's but instead I write about you
Your crooked smile
Your red vans
that strut past me on the boardwalk
You skinny arm that waves at me
to break the glass of awkwardness that nothing ever happened
The wave is something else
It is cleansing
the hand attached to this arm washes away our past transgressions Know that I am not yours
Even though I bled for you
Licked it off your lips like I needed you
on the second hand couch
in my basement

I sell remedies
To my enemies
Of lust
And life
And love
I curse my foes
With my heart of gold
And cold hands fitted with gloves
I sever those warm hands at the wrist of my transgressors
**** my soul
And all I know
For pills and potions of the tides