it was last winter by the icy river covered with crisscrossing cracks as we skated the tenuous surface wanting only to fall into each other’s arms
it was when I found a bruise on my collarbone and I believed it was from you loving me so much you wanted me to break just so that you could kiss the pain away
it was the darkness of a movie theater as the backdrop for our obsession we grew together starting with our fingers as they interlaced and never let go
it was me carving scars into my forearms so that I could reassure myself that I still existed, even when you weren’t there
it was lying on the roof under the stars and counting constellations and being worried that you would dislike how I named them and push me off the edge
It was later, the wanting to jump
I was only a half of a whole I was never as interesting or pretty as I was with you, so I was always with you
If you had told me that to save you from drowning I had to go in your place I would have jumped in the ocean begged the sharks to surround me tied myself to the smooth worn rocks
I think you would have let me
it was when you would act as if you were blind and try to learn the hills and hollows of my face with your fingertips sometimes following the line of my neck to the triangle shadow at the base of my throat and farther onward than I wanted you to go
I should have known it in the way I shivered when you touched me I could never figure out if it was happiness or fear anxiety or anticipation you tried to cover me with a blanket but that only made it worse I wanted to expose myself to you needed you to see every dip and curve of my stillness so that I could prove you were right for me
you gave me a pendant for my birthday that hung heavy round my neck it was inscribed with the word forever in spiky script and I knew that you were claiming me for yours knew that the necklace was my dog tag so that if I got lost, people would know they couldn’t have me. I say people I mean boys The other boys, the ones you seemed so afraid of you were sure that once your back was turned, I would ***** around offering my love and kisses like party favors I never would have.
I offered you all of myself yet somehow, you always wanted what I was holding back I was holding back nothing; there was nothing else for me to give away my arms were holding together the little bits of me that were left but you wanted those too, and because I loved you, I gave them to you and fell apart in the wind crumpled to the ground like a fallen house of cards
instead of kissing in the rain we fought in the rain our shouts were in sync with the thunder when lightning struck I cursed God that he hadn’t hit you he never seemed to hear
I liked the summer the best It was too hot to do anything but lie on the sticky grass watching the fireflies spell out our names in phosphorescent afterimages in the southern night that was where you hurt me so silently your hands around my neck like an extension of your embrace
by that time I had been trained to think that was all it was