I miss the way your fingertips
drew circles on my almond skin.
I miss wrapping your hair around
my finger like a phone cord
when I watched you sleep beside
me.

Now that I have your attention…

My issue’s not with the lost loves
but with the ones still holding on.
Because of you, pain is a cliché.
Human emotion has become
redundant. The only thing
that’s #depressing about
your life is how you’ve made
a conscious decision to relive
your “hells” constantly by making
them the focus of your poetry.

I’d done a lot of drugs that summer, drank a lot, and lost my virginity a hundred times over.
David. He was the man who ****** me for the first time. He was in his thirties, a Buddhist, and a patient teacher.
In the dark, he was so ****, iron filings and gum.
But perhaps it wasn’t him that enticed me into ***. I think it might have been a combination of everything. The way his girl-faced Buddha shone by the light of a candle. The view from his window – city flowers and washing lines, Chopin on the stereo, the cleanness of his sheets, the girl in the next room talking loudly about Jean Paul Sartre.
I want you, I said.
Fifteen, I was. He didn’t know that, of course.

There was a terrible pressure when he ****** me, so he told me to
Relax
Relax
Relax
Imagine you’re emptying out
Imagine you’re emptying out and accepting something holy
communion if you like
you're catholic aren't you?
You look lovely
You feel lovely
You look lovely

There was a part of my mind that thought of girls being torn through, blood and pain, embarrassment in the morning. I couldn’t stay hard.
There was a part of me that gave in, with my knees up by my shoulders.
There was a part of me that wanted to flip him onto his back and **** him, part of me that was desperate to be a man, part of me that hated this submission.
In the morning there was no embarrassment, just cereal and ten different types of smile. Milk in bed. A lecture on loving kindness.