the day in the park when you told me you loved me i noticed things that i never noticed before. your hair looked darker than usual and i ran my fingers through it almost absent-mindedly, a quick action that happened before i could process it. my fingertips came back wet.
saturday morning and clearly straight from the shower you smelt of deodorant, that lovely boy smell, of something fresh and clean but with the hint of sweat already from the walk over here which made me wonder why you ever even bothered with showers, when i liked the ***** sweatiness of your skin more than anything.
spring was sprung, flowers everywhere, the council gardeners pruning and weeding every afternoon when i wandered this way after school, but blissfully absent this morning, you and i lone lovers on a lark.
i noticed the dandelions were swaying, how picturesque, us in that strange place between friends and more, and the grass wet and dewy beneath our feet, rose bushes lining the path. but we strayed from that path, we did. you stole my hand and we started running, you raucous and wild, a lion inside a boy, and me, following and cautious but laughing.
there was this lovely weeping willow, the branches dangling gorgeous leaves, sweeping the ground, a curtain of green which you parted and brushed aside like the way you sometimes brush my hair from my face. under that weeping willow things happened.
“i can’t deny it,” you said. you said, as you touched my hair and my face and no other part of me, so intimate and courageous with my heart beating faster than any other saturday morning. “i can’t deny the fact that i love you,” and you were pushing me back as you stepped forward, little nudges in the hip and the shoulder and then maybe just hard enough to leave a bruise you pushed me against the trunk of the tree. as steady as i was weak.
i checked later, at home, safe in my bedroom with the curtains closed, in the almost dark i pulled off my shirt and checked, and yes you did, you did leave a bruise, but it was not as painful nor as potent as when you finally finally finally kissed me, your lips air as i was drowning, against that weeping willow with your hands finally finally finally on my waist and stomach and *******, and the fire you started in my heart as stupid as it sounds that has not and will not burn out, the pain of having to leave you at my doorstep and waiting until the next time you could relinquish my need, and now after we’re broken up the pain of not knowing if i’ll ever feel those lips again.
the bruises on my skin do not even begin to rival the internal bruising of that first kiss.