9th grade lover

When I was 14 and more tender-hearted than not 

You served my first fear on a silver platter.

I didn’t know how to handle small smiles constant touches 

I didn’t understand the language you were speaking.

I didn’t know you had my heart until you traced your fingers on it,

Slow, beating as I watched from afar.

And then I understood, and the blood moved faster

Coating your fingertips with sticky, wet infatuation 

Until you dropped it, from a boy’s hand

Blinking in muddled confusion. 

And now, no longer a boy, I see

You navigate the fields of seeds I did not sow. 

You take a hand of my closest friend,

And whirl her until she gets all giggly. 

Cheeks flushed with happiness, she comes to me 

Spinning cotton- candy and spitting sugar 

Floating on “pink ballet slippers” above the air.

I itch to tell her about the cavities 

That gravity works in one way or another 

That she will bleed out as I did. 

But I keep my tongue against my cheek. 

My warnings are as much for me as they are for her, 

I never really let you go.