I had woken up to a text from the boy that morning, something that rarely happened. We decided when this started, months ago, that it wasn’t a relationship, just...well, I didn’t know anymore. I knew that when I looked at him the back of my throat felt swollen and when his eyelashes brushed my cheek it hurt deep inside my chest but I also knew that his eyes wandered to half the girls he knew and that he had a reputation of being a boy you couldn’t get to stay but did any of that matter? I hadn’t read the text yet and I didn’t know if I should.

His name was Josh and his hands were calloused and he liked bitter wines and reading, which makes him sound soft, but he wasn’t or at least that’s not how I saw him. We had met in the basement of a party two years ago, when I was sixteen and afraid of boys when they had too much to drink and he was seventeen and had promised to be a designated driver. Being the only two sober people at a party felt like being in our own little bubble, our own world, and I liked it. I liked him right away, not in a romantic way, just in a friend way and if that sounds childish then it’s because I am. We went for a walk that night because I like being outside more than anything and I liked the way he agreed to it and I liked the way his arms looked in his faded blue t-shirt and I liked that he laughed easily and openly and I liked that he made me want to smile too.

I guess I should admit that part of the reason I wasn’t drinking was that I knew the calorie count of every single bottle of alcohol and I knew that some drugs would make me hungry and food wasn’t something that I wanted to be part of my life at that time and smiling was a rare thing then. But he made my cheeks perk up and things felt a little better than okay for the first time in months, maybe years, and that night was the first time we kissed even though it didn’t really mean anything because despite my attraction to him and despite the way his hands wandered almost immediately, we were still strangers to one another and we were just teenagers. After the kiss, which was only a few seconds and didn’t actually elicit a huge amount of excitement for either of us, he leaned his forehead against mine and squeezed my shoulders in a way that felt strangely intimate and encouraging. I didn’t know how to react to this so I laughed awkwardly and we walked back to the party with folded arms so that our hands couldn’t brush.

Within a few weeks I met his soft-cheeked little brother who had chubby hands that gripped my fingers with the tight urgency of a kid who can’t talk yet and I met his mother who had the same dark eyes and olive skin as Josh and I could see the resemblance right away and she hugged me right he introduced us. His house became my second home; mine was always cold and empty and I was never really happy being there-- and my skin began to smell like his. We never went to his room and the three times he came to my house, he never saw mine. There were no rules for this, it just didn’t feel like the thing to do. There was no real romance between us, even though we did have a connection that was almost palpable and he had a few girlfriends and I had a few boyfriends and two girlfriends and we cried on eachother more nights than either of us would like to admit.  In May, he graduated and I watched quietly as a swarm of girls hugged him and kissed his cheek and posed for photos with him and I realized that it was jealousy that I felt, growing inside of me and wrapping itself around my windpipe and I was surprised. He smiled sheepishly at me from across the gym and I gave a little wave and when he looked away I ran to the bathroom and vomited  up the clementine and toast I had eaten for breakfast. Josh was waiting for me when I got back and I was embarrassed but he smiled just like he always had and we went home together. That night, when everyone else had left, we sat in his basement where we spent so much time together and his hand found mine and I felt all the blood rush out my body and every single nerve of my body was tense and within a few minutes we were kissing, for the second time, and I straddled him on the couch and we made out until my body felt like it was melting into nothing and when we finally stopped I leaned against him and when I looked into his face his eyes were shining more than usual. I realized he was crying and just like a year ago, I was deeply uncomfortable and I picked up my shirt from the floor and pulled it on and went upstairs and left him with tears streaking down his cheeks.

Nothing was the same after that and sometimes I thought this was good but some of the time, most of the time, it felt bad. That summer we avoided eachother and when I saw his mom she tucked my hair behind my ear and said she missed me and I would smile and tell her how busy I was and I could tell from the crinkling of her eyes that she didn’t believe me. She had Josh when she was only 15 and I felt close to her because of this; she was very young and very beautiful and she was a good mother. Maria, that was her name, which I thought felt nice in my mouth and she was the first to notice that I always finished dinner with plate more full than empty and she would sometimes slip a piece of gum into my hand when I ate too much and had to slip away to the bathroom with the water running and stick my head in the toilet like I taught myself to when I was far too young.

Anyway, in late September I was walking to the park a few miles from my house and there was Josh, perched on the fence, smiling at me and with no explanation we fell back into things all over again and he took me in his arms and pulled me in close. I realized that the other half of my heart was back and I had felt empty for the past few months and that’s when our relationship limbo started. We slept together for the first time later that week, and walking into his room for the first time was like breaking a spell. I felt a little chill pass through me and I realized that nothing could ever go back to the way it was before because I had a ****** in my hand and seeing his room was like seeing a little bit into him and as he tugged at my hand I was suddenly unsure of what we were about to do but I silenced those thoughts and allowed him to push me back onto his bed. Unlike the night of his graduation he was on top this time, and it was different from the other times I had been with other boys because it was like he was a part of me, and maybe this isn’t something you share but he was the first boy to make me *** and it felt fitting that he made me feel alive in so many ways, this being the most physically apparent. I lay on his chest afterwards and stroked the chest that I had cried on too many times and everything felt utterly right and I hoped that he felt it too. He fell asleep quickly like boys always do and his eyelids were delicately purple in a way that reminded me of eggshells and bruises and he was attractive in a way that made me a little sad. I kissed his silky eyelids right then, impulsively. He woke up for a moment and he smiled at me but he drifted off again and I was excruciatingly happy and that’s when Maria opened the door.

I. I say I love you but you remind me of the 5am sky like a bruise across the horizon and holding back sobs in the back seat of your best friends car with my knees pulled up to my chest

II. I say I love you but the nonfiction section of the library feels too much like your hands that afternoon we kissed hidden between shelves of books, worried the librarian might find us

III. I say that I love you but girls like me can't be held down and love is an umbilical cord and I want to be free and I need to own myself. You can't.

IV. I say that I love you but how could I when you and I have changed so much I don't even remember how it feels to be in love?

V. I say that I love you and I am sorry for lying.

The sheets were soft and crumpled underneath my back and my mind was wandering even though this wasn’t the time for that, and I thought about how much I always loved the feeling of bare skin against sheets, year round, even when it was far too cold for it to be a reasonable thing to do. There’s something **** about just being naked, as simplistic as it sounds. With only his skin, my hair, and the sheets touching my body, I felt exposed but I also felt strong, which was an interesting mix of emotions. I knew I should have been more fixated on what was going on (he certainly was) but I always feel somewhat disconnected from my body and having someone else touch it made it feel even more foreign. It wasn’t unpleasant to have his hands all over me, maybe just a little disappointing and I suddenly wanted to push him off me and go for a walk outside where the air could fill my lungs. Stuffy. It was stuffy in his room, I thought. The distinctly boyish smell of deodorant and sweat mingled with the fake perfume of the candle I remembered to bring and it was was suffocating me. Outside, I could hear his little brother playing loudly in the yard and I wanted to be a little kid again but instead I was inside in a darkened room doing things that seemed too adult for my body and things I used to tell myself I would never do. I liked his brother; he was a sweet kid and last spring I took him to the park a few times when the older boy on top of me had work at the bodega down the street. It felt ***** to hear his childish yells and I wanted more than ever to leave, but the strange more-than-friends relationship with this boy meant that he wanted this once in a while and I liked him more than I had admitted to anyone yet. The cracks in his ceiling were familiar to me by now and once, after we--******? made love? I still didn’t know what to call it-- he told me that the first night I came over, drunk and crying, he had to run to peel off the glow in the dark stars that had still been up, a remnant from his childhood, and I found this endearing and I had kissed him again for that. One of his hands was running through my hair now and I stroked his chest, which was leaner and tanner than my bluish-white hands. In the back of my mind I thought I might love him but it could have been his body between my thighs. I could never be sure.

I was always a really ***** kid. Not in a slimy way but I always just liked playing out in the trees even though I’d come home with my knees caked with ****** ***** and my hair tangled with sap that would take days to wash out and I’d have to quietly wash off with the garden hose because there would be Hell To Pay if I tracked mud in the house. It was my solace, mostly, running away into the whispering pines that surrounded my house until I was 13 and our neighbors sold it out to contractors and a family with a boy who liked to torture bugs moved in and that was the end of my hiding place. But until then I knew the fastest way to the river that hardly anyone else ever visited and I knew the best place to hide and I could climb this one fir in three seconds flat and it was wide enough that it would shelter my 9 year old shoulders. I always wore these little blue leather sandals which were a luxury because the rest of the time I had to wear orthopedic shoes because I was born with club feet that still hurt when I run too much. Even though my hands liked to dig in the dirt and I liked to feel the ground under my bare skin I was never really a tomboy. I wore this purple velvet skirt all the time and I wore my blonde hair long enough that I could sit on it. My hair has always been a security blanket for me and it’s still a defining feature now that it curls around my ears in a way that people seem to like. But at the time, pre-puberty it was always long and slightly tangled and my mom would take it in her fist and pull my head back and threaten to cut it off whenever she was angry, which was often, or when I didn’t brush it, which was almost as often. My house felt bigger then, when my chin was doorknob-level and the swings my dad built made you feel like you were flying. Our house was yellow and green and from the gardens and forests around it you could almost picture it being in some movie, some sun-drenched movie from the 70s and with my long wood-colored hair and outdated sandals I would have fit in. I’ve never looked like the rest of my family, who are all thinner, more angular somehow, and their skin was always freckled and rough. My skin has always been so clear you can see the veins running under the surface and my limbs have always been longer, softer, and I was fat for a few years until I stopped eating altogether and suffered over the calorie count of celery versus carrots and would lie in bed with my head spinning and every bone in my body aching. But that was a different time, and as a child I preferred to lie on the warm sidewalk and watch the cars pass and tell myself that if six cars passed before my mom got home I would be safe and today would be a good day. Sometimes five would pass and it would still be a good day, and sometimes ten would pass and it would be one of the worst yet, but it was a childlike game and it comforted me to think I had control over her actions. That was back when hearing the front door open at 7 made ***** rise in my throat and hearing her 160 pound footsteps on the nubbly carpet outside of my room made my body shut down before her hands even touched the door. There was a technique to turning off your mind. I learned this before I could ride a bike and it all came down to two very simple things: close your eyes, and it will be over soon. You just had to wait things out and afterwards you could run to the bathroom and watch the blood pool in the white porcelain tub and it would slide down, slightly foamy, with hot water that burned over the fresh scars that mingled with faded ones in places my own hands could never reach.

it was wednesday
was the first time i told you i loved you
my eyelashes fluttered against your cheekbones

it was wednesday
the first time i fell in love
your hands against mine
and you called me your queen
i laughed because i knew
we were 17 and love is an illusion
but it felt good anyway

it was sunday, actually
when my heart cracked and i told you
to never speak to me again
and i ******* meant it
your knuckles were white and your fists were red
but i was more afraid
of your heart than your hands

loving you felt like a fire that thawed me
but it was all i could do
to keep from screaming
when the ceilings began to collapse
and smoke poured from my mouth
pain feels good
but only for a second

it’s been months
almost a year now
i don’t know why i can’t get you out of me
you’re still in there somewhere
smoldering away and for me
it’s still a wednesday
and im telling you i love you

a prayer for every broken heart
a prayer for every sob that threatens to fill your throat as your eyes betray the flood rising in your chest
a prayer for every stranger with track marks in their wasted forearms and eyes hollower than their stomachs
a prayer for the weak, a prayer for the helpless, a prayer for the strong
a prayer for every time he hit her and a prayer for every time she didn’t move an inch
a prayer for the blood on the thighs of a girl who was torn by a drunken frat boy who never learned to hear “no"
a prayer for every sin of the heart
amen

there was one hazy Sunday morning where I woke up and called the boy I loved and he asked me to marry him and I didn't know how to say no to men yet. 3 months later he whispered with his body tangled with mine while he thought I was lost in sleep that he was afraid that we'd be married for years and one day he'd wake up and I would be gone without a trace because I can't handle relationships and feelings and love and I grew up alone and I can't stop craving owning my own heart. I wanted to be owned body and soul but I couldn't let myself go without digging my claws in one last attempt at holding on to the only thing that will ever be mine. what you'll never understand is this: girls like me with tiger guts can't be conquered, no matter how much we want to. when the only constant in your life is a deep and abiding addiction to reliance on yourself, relationships become a secret battle of how much of your heart you can hide from your lover and pray they never shine on the darkest parts of you.
this is a letter to you: you, my first love, my empty-hearted lover, no longer my anything. my life has become intertwined with yours and I'm still learning to pick my story apart from yours. a letter of repentance, of forgiveness, of pleading. a letter to tell you that you were right and I never could have stayed in your life and your bed for a lifetime.
(never quite) yours & all the love I don't understand,
girl