Dear M,

I know you’re worried about me. Don’t be. Here’s the poem you’ve been wanting from me. I know it’s not enough but it’s all I can do right now.

1. I know this is pointless.

2. First day of second semester, freshman year, I don’t have many friends but I’m still hopeful. I meet her. She is nice and funny; pretty in the way where you have to observe her features twice before realizing she’s beautiful. She talks like uncensored music and oceans that flood my ears and captivate my eyes in a way that should come with a parental advisory sticker. Her name isn’t important.

3. Her name is every other word in my head as the clock ticks the tone of ‘not yet, but soon but not soon enough’ because without realising it I’ve become addicted. It was quick. An injection you don’t feel as you close your eyes and turn your head. She is calming but riles me up with certain words that fall from her mouth like pop-its into my ears. We talk sexual exploits and cartoons. She has me clutching my stomach and bent over before class is even half finished. When the teacher shushes us, she sends me a knowing look which feels like the handshake of a secret society no one else knows about. I’m happy.

4. She gets a boyfriend. His name is Peter. Peter is nice, so nice, a great guy that’s good at math, baseball, social situations and looking good. He’s the kinda guy who loans you a pencil and doesn’t ask for it back and asks how you’re doing and genuinely wants to know. Peter is nice.

5. I am happy for her. So happy. I can’t tell her enough how happy I am; for her that is. We still talk the same with a distinct lack of filter and grace on our lips and the subject matter of sex. We are still the same. Except we’re not.

6. His name is not important because all I can remember are feeling his lips and his hands and friction because I can’t always think about her; she can’t always be on my mind and I need to feel something other than a burning sensation down my throat while ice cubes slide down my spine as my mouth stumbles around words my heart hates itself for and my brain can’t even comprehend.

7. It’s over quickly and I finally have something to contribute to our daily conversations other than crushes and fantasies I fabricate to remain complacent. She is proud of me. She beams with something similar to that of a parent watching their child win a soccer game. It fills me with a liquid sensation of relief that warms the places where I’m bruised with fingertip impressions and stale lips. I bask in it.

8. She doesn’t tell me about the softness of sex and the kisses and falling in love and I can’t tell whether I’m relieved or concerned.

9. I see Peter and her kiss once and the fist in my stomach clenches tighter than before. The looks are still there as well as the touches that burn the longer they linger along my arms, hands, back, neck, everywhere. She still holds my hand. I can’t tell if it’s some form of prolonged torture that’s leading to a death I don’t mind coming or if it’s the only anchor holding us together, keeping me from floating away into the debris surrounding us.

10. We kiss. It is both the implosion, rapture, asteroid-impact, all-consuming-flood that drowns and takes over my world.

11. After, I become the skeletons and dust that sits in the mouths of boys with teeth like cages, waiting for the air to eat me alive and to grow into the darkness that wears me as a second skin.

12. I learn not to mistake her for the ocean again.

Love,

Aiden