“I didn’t love him.
I barely liked him.
But he was heat at the peak of summer,
and he kissed like I was his last meal–
And I was looking for a body to drown in.
Back then, I had a candy-coated heart,
like flowers tucked in the pages of a hymnal,
and he had the thick, calloused hands
of a working man.
He talked like a friend,
but touched like an animal
and my bubblegum chest wanted that
in ways it couldn’t understand yet.
He asked what colors I kissed in
and the poet in me cracked open and spilled over–
Exposed like an open wound,
like all the soft, pink parts of me
I didn’t know about.
He was a means to an end:
my Machiavellian loss of innocence.
I don’t regret him,
but sometimes I wish I did.”