And I will sit on this bench,
With needles in my brain
Dancing like they are knitting a scarf in your favorite color,
I will sit in the same place
Where you used to have your midnight cigarette
Where I had joined you
And the harmonies of our voices colliding in external thought
Made Beethoven rise from the grave
And while I sit here
I will wait for you
So that I may fall in love with you for another twenty-four hours
And we may return to our midnight cigarettes on the bench

Why do we say we love the sunlight
And the way it bursts through a window in the morning
But we choose to stay inside
And ignore it

Why do we say we love the rainfall
And the ripples it makes in small puddles in the driveway
But we spend all of our money on umbrellas
And raincoats

Why do we say we love the flowers
And the scent that drifts from them,
Using the wind to hitch a ride
But we step on them and rip them from the ground
Leaving them to die

Why do we say we love each other
And each other’s voices and mannerisms
But we leave each other and let strangers be strangers
We ****** and ****, count our fallen as forgotten
We put ourselves first
Why don’t we love

Drink caffeine-free tea
Take deep breaths
Know that you are beautiful
Know that you are important
Remind yourself that you have stardust braided into your flesh
And so does everyone you have ever touched
Speak this mantra to yourself:
I'm okay, I will be okay, it's okay, it will be okay
And never let anyone tell you who you are

Thirteen is a fragile age
For both boys and girls
Not only for girls
But mostly for girls
When you are a female,
By the time you’re thirteen
You already have a basic idea of what you’re supposed to be like:
What you should wear, how you should behave, what you should say
By the time you’re a thirteen-year-old girl in the year 2008
There is an unspoken list of rules,
A non-verbal inventory of criteria that you should have met
By your fourteenth birthday
You must shave your legs,
You mustn’t wear dresses above knee length,
You must lose your virginity
By the time that I was thirteen years old,
All of my closest girl friends had lost their virginities
Albeit, they were fourteen and I was thirteen because I was a year ahead
But that is a different story for a different poem
This poem is about ****
I remember hearing my friends talk about how they had lost their virginities
In their beds, in the shower, in the backseat of his car
But when I was thirteen, I wasn’t worried about ***
I didn’t want to lose my virginity
Not in a bed, or a shower, or the backseat of a car
No, when I was thirteen, I was highly preoccupied with other things
I was worried about love and what love meant
I wanted to feel love in my heart and in my head
Before I ever felt it in my ******
And let it be said, now, half a decade later
That *** and love are not always the same thing
I wish I would have known that then
I wish I would have known that when he put his hand down my pants
While I was only trying to enjoy a movie in the company of my boyfriend
A man who I thought I could trust
Excuse me, a boy who I thought I could trust
I wish I would have known that when he whispered daggers in my ear
Telling me that he loved me enough to “grace” me with his touch
I wish I would have known that when he pushed me into the couch
With the rough insides of his palms
And gained entry to a gate
That I never gave him the key to
And I wish I would have known that when I asked him later,
“What just happened?”
Too stunned and in pain to cry
And he replied,
“It’s what girlfriends and boyfriends do.
It’s what you do when a girlfriend loves her boyfriend.
You do love me, right?”
And I said yes
When I went back to his house a week later,
I told him that I felt ashamed, and guilty, and *****
Because I didn’t want to lose my virginity
And I had told him that again and again and again
And I was enraged
I was angry because I didn’t have a word for what had happened to me
I had been taught that **** only happens in dark alleys
Not in the basement of your boyfriend’s home
I had been taught that **** only happens when you wear short skirts and halter-tops
Not jeans and a sweatshirt
I had been taught that rapists were old men who I didn’t know
Not my sixteen-year-old boyfriend of two years
And he responded to my anger
But instead of pushing me into the couch,
He pushed me into the wall
And then into the floor
And then out of his life
And you would think,
“Good, this is where it ends. It’s all over now.”
But let it be said, now, half a decade later,
That for survivors of ****** assault, it is never over
The story continues with Planned Parenthood staff, two years later
Having to be the ones to break the news to me
That it was not normal relationship behavior
And hearing the nurse, outside the door, tell another nurse,
“We’ve got another one.”
The story continues with my father asking me,
“Are you sure you didn’t just have *** with him? Were you asking for it?”
The story continues with my sixteen-year-old classmates
Calling me a ***** *****
Because a friend of my ****** decided to tell the entire school
About what had happened to me in that basement three years prior
The story continues after I broke up with my ex-fiancé
And he befriended my ******
In an attempt to **** me off for “breaking his heart”
The story never ends for ****** assault survivors
Statistically, a quarter of the women reading this poem
Will be or have been ***** at some point in her lifetime
And for those women, the story will not end
So now the question presents itself:
How can we end the story?
Therefore, as the author of this **** poem,
I take responsibility for this question,
And I answer it this way:
In the same way that I learned
When I was thirteen years old
That love and *** are not always the same thing,
You must teach your boys
That yes and silence are not always the same thing.

That was the first time
that words weren't able to describe
the beauty
that was before me.

Words couldn't describe how I felt.

When I looked at him,
I forgot about everything.

The world melted around me
while I just lied next to him.

I forgot about everything.

I forgot about the things I love,
the things I hate.

I forgot about the world
outside of that room
and everyone in it.

I forgot to worry about
how I haven't called my father lately,
my ceaseless to-do lists in the desk drawer,
or the cherry blossoms in Virginia.

But I didn't care,
because I didn't know.

I had forgotten.

It's funny how all these lovely things
that you usually use
to block out the ugly thoughts
suddenly become meaningless
when you succumb to one single amazing thing.

When you hone in on that one amazing thing,
nothing else matters.

He made the sun look boring.

He made the universe seem worthless.

As I was lying next to him,
I had decided that,
if given the option,
I would rather stay in bed all night with him
to watch him wake up in the morning
than ever see a single cherry blossom in Virginia
ever again.

I do drugs everyday
To keep the memory tied to the dock
With tangled ropes and threatening weather
"There's a storm rolling in."
But I would never find you
Unless I was sober
Because when I think about the way
Your tongue tasted with mine
I get high anyways
And how your flesh feels
When it combines with mine
My core becomes numb
And how your smile
Lit up my bedroom for the first time all year
I missed it later that night
When the light switch refused to work
You bring me something
That I've never seen before
You have the key to a door
That I've been trying to open all my life
And for the first time
I'm not scared to fall
I am only afraid
That I will not be caught

I am lying here in bed
trying to remember the softest parts of your neck
where I kissed you
and how your lips felt
pushed into mine

but the memory is fuzzy
and unclear.

I was drunk that night
and you were drunk that night.
You were drunk for the first time in your life
and to this day,
I feel as if I took advantage of you.
I feel like I stripped
some sort of innocence from you,
even though I know
that you were never innocent
to begin with.

I am starting to believe
that it shouldn't have even happened.
I am beginning to wonder
where we would be
if I had never exploited an imaginary innocence
that creeps beneath our clothes.

I am starting to believe
that that night was an accident.
But it is no accident
that when our bodies were pressed together,
our hearts beat in synch.
It is not an accident
that when I see you now,
my heart is suddenly filled with stones
and my airways are suddenly blocked.
They are blocked with that same innocence
I stole from you almost three months ago.

I guess you could say that this is only a crush.
But thank God it is,
because love ******* hurts
and how I know I would rather be crushed
than hurt you.