Aug 2019
I fell asleep in her arms last night; she led me to her bed and asked me to lay there. I felt her breath, warm in my chest and my ear and her lips pressed to my neck, thinking, God, this is all I ever wanted. It’s funny cause she did nothing except hold me in the crevices where his arms picked me up. She didn’t grip me where I wanted him to, nor did she choke me the way I wished he would on our last night. She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night, when she asked if it was okay if she spoon me before we leave. I remember wishing for the same thing from another girl from California, but I guess I got it now that we both understand we’re not each other’s to keep. I will admit, it’s still hard for me to accept that I can be held, that anyone could look at my body and not see broken bones and a broken heart, awkwardly bandaged together by a Band-Aid of forced resilience.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. The first night since he stopped holding me, tears streaming down my cheeks even though I don’t cry in front of people, that I felt alright. Maybe not alright, but felt like I was finally on my way to becoming so. The first night I slept with no tears on the pillowcase. I realize that even as I crawled under the covers that I was keeping some walls up, but that this could be the way I live if only I could make them topple down.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. The first night I realized my body was just a warm body that wanted to be held. No stray kisses from a would-be lover I’d never see again. No one entering and exiting my lithe frame, forgetting that even though resilience is woven into every part of my bones and I come from an island that floods itself every single year, at the end of the day I am also a tiny body that needs to be treated with tenderness. The tenderness I knew he’d give, if he was willing and able. But I knew he was neither, and perhaps never will be. Would I have sacrificed one night of pleasure for a possible eighteen years of regret.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. In the morning I was jolted awake by the sound of another girl’s alarm; still she did nothing except insistently lay her head on my shoulder as if to say, “Come back to bed.” And so we slept like that for another two hours, almost missing breakfast, this girl who liked to do everything with no strings attached and this girl who had only recently discovered that sometimes people can be exactly like you in all the worst ways. Still somehow dreaming of a boy from Michigan while laying next to a girl from California. In those moments of quiet relief I nearly began thinking about what it would be like if things were different. Even she said right before we fell asleep, that if we were in the same city we would be together. It is true, this is the kind of tenderness my jaded, lovelorn heart deserves. But we are not in the same city, and so we cannot be together. This bed, this girl, this circumstance -- I’ve come to accept that this is the way things are written to be.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night, when she asked if it was okay if she spoon me before we leave. I remember wishing for the same thing from another girl from California, but I guess I got it now that we both understand we’re not each other’s to keep. I will admit, it’s still hard for me to accept that I can be held, that anyone could look at my body and not see broken bones and a broken heart, awkwardly bandaged together by a Band-Aid of forced resilience.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. The first night since he stopped holding me, tears streaming down my cheeks even though I don’t cry in front of people, that I felt alright. Maybe not alright, but felt like I was finally on my way to becoming so. The first night I slept with no tears on the pillowcase. I realize that even as I crawled under the covers that I was keeping some walls up, but that this could be the way I live if only I could make them topple down.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. The first night I realized my body was just a warm body that wanted to be held. No stray kisses from a would-be lover I’d never see again. No one entering and exiting my lithe frame, forgetting that even though resilience is woven into every part of my bones and I come from an island that floods itself every single year, at the end of the day I am also a tiny body that needs to be treated with tenderness. The tenderness I knew he’d give, if he was willing and able. But I knew he was neither, and perhaps never will be. Would I have sacrificed one night of pleasure for a possible eighteen years of regret.
She did nothing except hold me.
I fell asleep in her arms last night. In the morning I was jolted awake by the sound of another girl’s alarm; still she did nothing except insistently lay her head on my shoulder as if to say, “Come back to bed.” And so we slept like that for another two hours, almost missing breakfast, this girl who liked to do everything with no strings attached and this girl who had only recently discovered that sometimes people can be exactly like you in all the worst ways. Still somehow dreaming of a boy from Michigan while laying next to a girl from California. In those moments of quiet relief I nearly began thinking about what it would be like if things were different. Even she said right before we fell asleep, that if we were in the same city we would be together. It is true, this is the kind of tenderness my jaded, lovelorn heart deserves. But we are not in the same city, and so we cannot be together. This bed, this girl, this circumstance -- I’ve come to accept that this is the way things are written to be.
She did nothing except hold me.
