Hey everyone! It's my nineteenth birthday and these are a collection of personal writings I did while freshly an adult (mostly in 2018). I actually had very little intention of publishing these until the idea popped into my noggin in about November. I'm in college and I thought it would be somewhat interesting to chronicle what were impulsive poems about people in my life that were taking up a lot of mental real estate (for whatever reason). It isn't curated and wasn't edited after the fact. At worst, these are bad, which is totally okay with me, and at best, it'll help someone feel less lonely. If you're younger than fourteen, I don't RECOMMEND you read some of these, but what the hell, it's the internet and nothing I say is about to stop y'all.

Anyway that's my intro and I hope that yall enjoy this stream of consciousness look into my post-high school, adult but very much still immature and fickle mind

So this poem is kind of an amalgamation of different romantic, platonic and parental relationships I had in high school and how they made me feel overall at the end of them.

We Solve Puzzles At Night
January 24th

I solve puzzles at night.
I don't wanna feel tiny or boring and I don't wanna be the follow-up to your garlic, your clams, your lemons.
I don't wanna be toothpaste or mouthwash or chewing gum or a bleeding orange with your thumbs dug into the sides.
I don't wanna be something you can lick off your fingers. I don't wanna be scraped along the car door as you pull up next to the hot rod Volvo in the car lot.

You bought a book of crossword puzzles -
I fed you the answers because you could not yet figure them out, because I did not want you to leave me,
and all the words I saw were backwards.
ana.
All backwards. And then you said my name backwards and I felt like a reverse image in a dark room and I felt like you were holding me underwater to see if I would expose myself.

I stand in front of the door with the phone in my hand. I enjoy it as you shove me aside.
I tell you I want to call the police, but I only ever wanted you to grip my hips firmly and get up in my face and and scream that you hated me.
I have the answers and you don't. I can block the door. I can spit at you and keep secrets and subvert all your expectations in exchange for more spit. More lemon juice and matchsticks. More reverse images and unfinished Sudoku puzzles.

You solve puzzles at night,
when I have gone to sleep, when the television is just a low and aimless buzz of gray noise.
You stare at my face in the dark and you swear you think I am some sort of monster. I know because you held my hand and whispered to me that I frighten you sometimes.
Connect the dots. We're both monsters but you wait until I'm sleeping to bleed me fucking dry.

I love you and I wanna be cared for. And I need to be useful, relevant, your dependency and your addiction,
I need to be the shit you work your hands into, I need to be the mud your boots leave imprints in, I need to know the answers to these puzzles you keep lashing across my back.
I need to be your Jerusalem, your Mecca, and your bejeweled treasure in the cavern that you cannot find, but can only long for. Something you can only imagine.

Solve this puzzle:
If you can, touch me, but only wistfully, like I'm gonna pass away right in front of you, like I'm a video. Wait by the back road that I dreamt about,
that I told you about,
where you stood in the field and you palmed my jaw,
not unlike how you do in reality, when I sleep,
when I cannot tell if you are as I am,
when I do not know if you see as I see.
Touch me like you did in this dream I once had, and then I will believe it.

You can force me to hate you if you want.
If that will make you happy, I will do it -
but I'm so tired of sinning for you. I'm tired of being the monster guarding the door, and I'm tired of telling you all the answers so you will not leave, and I'm tired of being no one's Jerusalem at all, just something soggy, and inedible, and reluctant.
So I will wait for myself.
I will wait longer. I will wait until I forget what we were supposed to say to one another, until I no longer hear my name when you say it backwards.

This poem is about unrequited crushes and how the "villain" or subject of the crush would secretly feel. No one actually has had an unrequited crush on me lol it's kinda antithetical to my overall point but I wrote this so I'm putting it in

And Fuck You!
January 26th

Aggrandized. That's how it felt. Like I was on the tail end of some spotted lizard and searching for the spot where I step off, into real fucking life, and you'd just get over the fact that I would not love you even if that lizard bit me in my fucking behind.

Hey! you yell at the back of my head, Look at me! I have given you everything! The cold bread under the banister! The clothespins I closed your mouth with! I have bought you movies and sunk my teeth into all your wives in alphabetical order, yet you do not love me!

I am sorry I do not love you, but you could have kept all of it and I would still be waiting for you to stop apologizing, as if your things, as if your hands, as if your voice, with the boom box and the amplifier and the beautiful common time symphonies you wrote in the back of your notebooks with the sullen hope that I'd fall in love with you, kisses the end of each sonata, like: we could've looked like this, like them, like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams - as if those things could have caused me to love you.

So I press you to the back edge of the cafeteria and your skin is cold. It's awkward more than anything. I don't want to pity you so I lick my teeth and I smile and tell you that it was nice seeing you again. I hear your heart crack and it is wonderful because you do not hurt me.

Let's talk one more time about all the lunch lines we weaved ourselves into. It was fun while it lasted, but I didn't care much for your loudness, and maybe it was my quietude that made you feel woefully inadequate, and maybe the meanest thing I ever did was not tell you the truth. I didn't love you and never could. There is nothing more to it and nothing less than the fact that I did not melt at your smile and I did not want you to touch me like I wanted a man to touch me and I did not see you like I saw her, or her, or him, or him.

Let that be the end of it! I bellow, whipping around to face you. And fuck you for making me feel bad!

These poems are about my ex-best friend. I wrote this a week after we stopped talking or something? Pour one out!

Six Years
April 1st

Woah, that took a long time. (Six years.)
Like, woah, much longer than it took to reverse into your driveway with Dad all those sunny Sundays and
woah, longer than it's gonna take to write this shitty little thing, that is being written for the purposes of
giving you one too, filing you as one of the greats, My Influence, both in art and mind,
longer than it's gonna take to get my bachelor's, my master's,
longer than the best night of my life: when we ran down the road at eleven to catch the last fireworks.
(And we sat under that tree together, and in the silence
I said I loved you and you said you loved me, too, Happy Fourth of July, Ana.)
Longer than those days I sat with you in hidden places and combed your hair away from your face like
I was growing for you and with you and by proxy of you,
longer than I feel I've been alive,
as if maybe the fat of my cheeks fell away from me as you did,
as if only now that I'm older
I realize that a mother is not always good for a child once they've grown.

I mean, woah.
Longer than those nights when I was so frustrated I could barely stop speaking,
longer than those spaces that we only shared glances of derision,
longer than hideous moments where I looked at you and only saw someone that was mean to me
for the sake of being mean.
Longer than I deserved.

(I won't presume to know, but) I think
it took so long that you would have rather
abandoned convention, struck a match, lit the whole thing on fire and burned me in the process
just to stop running.
I know the last night we were together in the city
as you gave me that neat seaweed snack
I loved you just as much as I wanted to be done with the whole thing.
Maybe wanting that was loving you,
because I knew you weren't happy, but I was too weak to say anything at all;
and that was my little crime.

Longer still will be the time without me.
Because the love and respect that I knew you once had for me
will grow, now suited for someone else,
and the happiness you once brought me
is now my happiness to give to another person.
Longer will be the days
where we thank God that we are here, and nowhere else,
and not sorry, and not tired.

I'm always going to be proud of you.
Proud of what we created: a family.
I finally have collapsed at the finish line,
and I am laying in cool sand,
and I see you in the distance,
so far ahead,
and you are smiling because we both know that it has been such
a long, long time for any two people to be together;
and although the bitterness gets loud when it's quiet,
and although you are irreplaceable,
I find myself overjoyed at the end of this marathon,
because, woah, it took a long time to get here.

Mean
April 6th

You idiot
Chill
Don't be stupid
You're so.... unnecessary
You don't know how to flirt
You don't know how to walk
Why don't you know this
You're so easily impressed
You're salty...
He doesn't care about you
You think he's going to magically want you now?
I'm just being honest
You should move on
That's really unsettling
That's really rude
It's hard to take you seriously
Calm down
Why is it my fault
Why do you care
I'm in a rut
Wow
Fine
Sure
K

HOOOOO boy the next two poems are about a dude I had a crush on at work. He was totally beautiful, completely unattainable, and absolutely had a girlfriend.

This one's bad but I wrote it so it's goin in B)

On Crushes
May 31st

So this is about relief or solidification

Or maybe a series of huge confessions that have been said before but still make me shudder and thrum like the back end of a car accelerating onto a highway.

Here we go

So you kinda make my skin feel like. Like it's never touched skin before. Like I feel your fingertips and I know that they're tan and I can feel that inside of you, like you have lived in this brown skin as long as you have known earth. Like somehow you became this person through waking up every day and seeing yourself... all that skin... knowing that would never leave you.

I'm overthinking this I know that

The truth is that maybe I see myself in you a little bit, but not the good parts - and if that would rub off then I would know that I wasn't meant to just be in my skin, I was meant to exceed that, somehow, as you've done. I've never been touched like that. That I know like sugar and salt.

If you touched me I would understand why people kill for sex. If you put your thumb on my lip I would see everything in color. If you pulled off your t-shirt because I asked you to, and you showed me everything, your rib cage expanding in an endless rhythm, your body like a chalice spilling over, I would find everything I wanted in the taste of it. Relief. Solidification. Finality.

Hey, maybe you'll understand why I'm like this

Why am I like this

I thought about you last night as the subject of my own movie, and you let me close my eyes and you asked me if I had to do this to my hair every time. In another dream you rested your hand on my navel and you asked if you could touch my chest and I said Only if we're under the sheets. Only if you feel but can't see what I'm desperate to hide. And then again I found myself with your face on my cheek and you asked me what I was so scared of.

Yeah so in summation I fear losing it I fear not finding it I fear that I am vastly overestimating my pull as I stumble from consciousness to consciousness like a fucked on piece of furniture or the painting that falls creakingly behind the wardrobe exposing a space that everyone knows wasn't there before but cannot place or care long enough to investigate what had happened

to me

You kinda make me feel like I can do this. You kinda make me feel staunchly awkward and uninteresting and ugly but I wanna know your opinion on it too, if I'm really fucking talking to you right now, it must mean I'm not disgusting, and I would be surprised if maybe you found me somewhat attractive, but you're looking at me and smiling so you. So you might. I choke on the idea. I covet it. You'd be the first to want me the way I want to be wanted.

Can you just look at me? Can you look at me when I don't know that you're doing it? Can you find all the stuff I'm scared of? I just wanna be seen.

I know you do, too. Like sugar and salt, I know that.

I stalked him on Facebook and found something he wrote smh. The totally ironic thing about all this is that he told me later that I was really pretty. So while I'm literally writing sad poetry like WHY DOES HE THINK IM UGLY THO????, I was being mad dramatic lol like chill sis

You Are the Focus of My Rampant Insecurity
June 22nd

Looking at you feels like backing the car up fast and almost crushing the bumper of some stranger's Beemer in the parking lot, and not knowing who you would seek for help if you had, and going home and ruminating needlessly on the moment you looked up and slammed on the brake in such a way that your whole body was thrown forward and everything resting in the back seat slid off with a crash.

Mostly the idea of needing you to feel good about myself scares me. All those thoughts I'd had - you with your head bent down in rapture, waiting for me to press my fingers to your scalp like a cat extending her neck forward so you know to touch. How could I resist the thought? When there's nothing for me to do I glamorize future memories with your presence. You're in dark rooms and you're in my ear and your voice is like cotton underwear and I wait and I wait and I wait for boys like you to seek me out, patch me up, salve the itch, soothe what fucking hurts.

I really want you to want me. I don't know how you would. I cannot connect a path from who I am to your desire. I try so hard to be pretty when you're close. I smile softly and then I hide from you because the intensity of it shoots needles right into my spine, and then I am laughing like I have never laughed, like you were my first. I hate it. Wipe me clean from you. I hear myself speak and everything I've ever said I want to swallow back into my mouth. I walk and it feels like I'm not even in my own skin and I am borrowing strangers' legs. I try to be beautiful and I'm a child trying on Mommy's heels for the first time.

Fuck!!!

I'm just myself. Patented loserdom. I try things out but in the end, it's farcical experimentation, backwards from result to hypothesis. Result: want me, want me, want me.

These next three poems are about a dude that was across the hall from me in my college dorm. I had an enormous crush on him for like 4 months. He's kind of a dick honestly?? But I didn't care I was gunning for him lol

Yeah, Maybe Not
September 17th

I'm really not tripping on you, like
I don't spend every moment thinking about you,
I've really just been ducking behind bushes and lowhanging branches and feeling the terrain for what it is:
never in my favor, moving against me, and it hurts when you touch me, because, like
I really need more than that;
Your hands aren't dry,
How wet they would feel on my chest makes my stomach clench, like
I've thought about it but not seriously, not too much,
Only enough to really scare anyone else, but like,
I'm not scared,
Although I may be if you look at me for a second too long.
If you looked at me too long you would see that you distract me,
Your body's the Holy Grail,
Even though you think you don't need it,
I could really want you if I was trying.
You surprise me when your face twists and it's suddenly all soft and lovely, like
make me clench,
make me cling onto you,
make me write poems about how I really ain't trippin' on this shit,
because you ain't shit,
because I'm a fucking woman and you're a little boy, like
I wouldn't fuck you if you begged on your knees.
Do all that to me and more, asshole-
I couldn't care less.
Really remind me how it feels to go crazy over nothing and I'll remind you how it feels to get tired of someone quick.
Or maybe not?

You're Embarrassing Yourself
October 3rd

Two nights ago... I really did have a dream where your head was in my lap. You were drunk and I brushed away hair from your temples and I felt so pleased to be tending to you like you were some naive, delicate thing. You were flush and soft nestled against my leg. Pretty as a blossom under me. I could play you if I wanted. Like a flute, I'd tongue your ear.

I know you don't mean anything you say and that's why I won't speak to you ever again. I still liked your curls in my hands and I wish that you would have kissed me at some point between then and now, even if it was just a joke, even if you weren't thinking much about how that would hurt me. I wouldn't mind if you did that.

Still wondering how I'll make my way out of your orbit. My sight goes neon pink when you're close - I like the warmth and the frustration, I like the teasing of my own psyche as it tiptoes closer and farther away from telling you the whole truth. (I like everything that comes with looking at you. Except the part where I can't look at you anymore but I wanna keep going so I'm sad for hours.)

It ain't right. You're nothing but an intermission, a careless typo, a crass word between two church-goers. A funny fluke! Yet I still had that dream. I'd wished to fall asleep to it the next night.

So I'll trade you in for some dignity. Most jokes lose flavor the second time around.

I Won't See You Next Semester Anyway
December 5th

My tongue sat on my bottom lip as I worked down to the floor; my hand was on a girl's waist and I felt my skin singing with the music, my mouth embittered by alcohol. I never felt so much like a grown-up in some muddy teenage Converse and a black body suit that I borrowed from my alcoholic roommate - and the crowd hugged so close I swore they were my flesh, my kinetic energy, my curves. I didn't try to look my best for you, but I saw you at the party anyway. First time in two months. You tapped me on my bare shoulder, our bodies folded into other damp, dancing bodies.

Your skin was slightly wet from rain or sweat - maybe both, considering the heat of the fraternity basement. My head touched the ceiling while yours was this deep pockmark in the plateau of male heads. You certainly didn't look like a brother. They moved like slime against the wall. You were drunk but still delicate. Smiling like an angel, curls matted against your head like some guileless cherub, lips glossed over by beer. "OH MY GOD!!!" I was so excited to see you, but at the same time wished I hadn't. I was still dismembering my affection. "THIS IS CRAZY!!!"

"WHAT IS?"

"THAT YOU'RE HERE, LIKE...!"

"She looks like a baddie, right?" my friend prodded you, much to my chagrin. When you agreed, it felt false. I suddenly felt bad for forcing you to comment on my body, because that had never been my intention, although I'd listlessly and abstractly thought about you ogling me before. (Maybe putting your hand up my shirt(?)) I had gotten dressed for everyone except for you, yet you were still the only person I cared to hear from. It'd been two months, I thought with some self-disdain.

"I'LL TEXT YOU TOMORROW!!!" you shouted over the music. "I GOT INTO THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND!!!"

"NO, YOU WON'T!!!" I told you.

You kissed your thumb and touched it to mine. "I promise," you'd screamed over a raging Tekashi69. It felt like a whisper pushing through me.

We arrange to meet after my french class. That evening, I go on my first date and think little of you, so anxious that it stings when me and my date hug. He smells like mint and pot and I'm a bit scared when I get in his car; later I lie to my mom about his age. When we meet up that night, I don't lie to you.

Or perhaps I do. My goal was to purge myself of you - you were quantifiably less attractive than me, a little bit slutty, blase at the worst of times, emotionally indecipherable. The day I'd eaten a whole brownie, gotten stoned off my ass, stolen your expensive gray Nikes and giddily fallen asleep in the football field - you told me you never thought girls touched themselves - that where you were from, they always lied about it. I still remembered that when the high wore off, I maintained this sexual longing for you as you slept on the floor underneath me. I fasted for ten days afterwards because I was scared you would make an appearance in my fantasies and that would make my feelings real. Sometimes, it felt like I was a fly and your eyes were amber, like I couldn't breathe through honey and epoxy so I suffocated. I hadn't felt such fondness for someone's eyes in three years, not without hate chasing it.

And the truth is that I thought about you. I want to tell you that I thought about you tonight, but can't.

Outside, from the top on my building, the fog is so thick that you can't see the cars' headlights flash across the highway in the distance. I turn off the light so you can see the blanket of gray better-

"That's so cool. Woah." And then, after a beat, you joke softly, "Are you gonna murder me now?"

"Nah, bro... I'm only gonna rape you," I tease.

Your laughter rings out in the dark, your back turning to the window, a sliver of light outlining your features and hiding you from me, like a man in witness protection during an interview. My whole body swells into your voice like a stretched piece of canvas.

Minutes pass. We discuss the merits of period blood - I tell you what I go through in gory detail, describe it to you as brains on a wall, red glops of matter and mucus purging themselves from my uterus in waves of debilitating pain so that I can create life, life not unlike yours. You want girls and a wife, you tell me, and you want to know what they'll go through; everyone should.

"Or maybe you're just morbidly curious," I suggest with a coy smile. "Want some fruit snacks?"

You finish my sentences and simultaneously give me the room to breathe. You listen intently, are excited to give your opinion. I love your naïveté. It isn't tiresome but refreshing, and kinda fucked up, because it makes me never want to talk to anyone else ever again.

Kiss my thumb and touch it to yours. "When I'm around other people, I'm always a version of myself..." My french teacher would want me to explain to you: Je souhaite que tu touches mon âme comme si c'est quelque chose d'être convoité - perhaps it would make more sense then. And I attempt to tell you without telling you. It's easier to say these things when I can't see your face. "I feel like if I don't re-calibrate myself, my life here will somehow cave in. Like, when I'm around my straight friends, I act like I don't think about girls... Around guys, I'm more than funny, more than kind, nonthreatening and slightly shorter... I don't think and I never have. I pretend I don't have period blood, I pretend to be pretty, I pretend things that bother me deeply are inconsequential. I'm only strange in ways others can learn to accept." I exhale deeply, finding the truth in the dark. "Not that I'm faking being another person. I'm faking being myself. It's exhausting."

I try to tell you again. "You're so weird - and everyone here is weird, too, but not in my way, not in your way." And again. "...Right now, I'm myself."

One time, I waited for you in the lounge all night, until my eyes were closing and the campus lights were flickering to sleep as well. An hour later, you texted me, "r u still around?" As I climbed up the stairs to my dormitory, I'd cursed that I had given up on you.

As if I should spend my whole life waiting for other men - and still, you will find me searching through old texts for clues, going over the conversations that only made sense at dawn, their meanings revealed by time and bitterness. I pretend that the night could go anywhere from here. Perhaps I'll lay on the small twin-sized bed and you'll find your way there, too. I see a version of us in the dark - I'm pushing your curls back from your eyes as you hold yourself above me on your knees and elbows. I struggle to kiss you then and I struggle to now.

You lose me over and over and never find me again. Behind door frames, around corners, at different tables, you are my invisible secret, actualized only by memory and hidden to everyone else. It's ugly because I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And you'd meet my eyes but never pay me a second glance if that suited you. You'd listen to me speak for hours - then forget everything the next moment - if that suited you.

I'll write you a love letter that isn't a love letter. Rather than being besotted in your presence, I would much prefer to feel nothing, perhaps even dislike you. Especially knowing what I know: tonight is the last time I will ever see you, this handshake is the last time I will ever touch you, and you could never see a path to me anyway. You rip your hand away from mine. "Don't make this awkward. I'll see you soon."

You barely leave before I call on the phone frantically, itching to confess. I repeat your name three times to you, as if you'll decrypt it and discover my intentions in the intonation. Like you'll know what I'm saying before I say it.

"Do you have a lighter?"

"Yes," I lie without hesitation.

"If I don't find one, I'll come to your room again," you tell me.

"Hey... I - I-" I don't want to say it over the phone but there's no other way. I know I won't see you next semester. I'll go mad. "I..." Five seconds of cold, dead silence stretch out between us before you finally speak.

"I'll call you in a bit."

You don't, so I whisper your name to my pillow. On my windowsill, there is a baby blue lighter I borrowed from my suitemate that you never came to my room to receive. I formulate questionnaires for you to complete late into the night. Could you want me? Could you be with me? Could you find me?

I tell everyone I know that I'm infatuated by you because I can't tell you myself. I type out a hundred messages and can't press send. I nearly call you to hear your voice reverberate through my chest like that thumping bass in the frat basement. (DUMB DU-DUMBDUMB DUMB DU-DUMBDUMB DUMB DU-DUMBDUMB STUPIIID!)

You're on your phone when I wrap my arms around your neck and nestle against you. I wake up from that dream only to volley into the next one, where my teeth grit when your skin screams painfully against mine. At some point, I wake up and am deeply sad, crushed by what I've seen and now can remember. I convince myself that I'll go crazy if I don't tell you.

hey this is awkward lol but i know i won't see you next semester so i just want to tell you that i like you (?!) not that i want to date you or anything, just that I like you a lot

hey this is a bit awkward but i know i won't see you next semester so i'm okay with it lol

hey I know I won't see you next semester lol so I just want to tell you that I like you (?!) no pressure i just wanted to get it off my chest

i just wanted to tell you for some god forsaken reason

I have to drink a quarter of a bottle of vodka, stumble to your dormitory hall in the freezing cold and ask my ex-roommate to send the message for me. I'm pretty fucking drunk, drunk enough that I forget I'm infatuated with you for an hour.

hey I know I won't see you next semester lol so I just want to tell you that I like you - no pressure I just wanted to tell you

Two minutes later:

I know we won't see eachother next semester but I want to wish you well in what happens in the future-you are smart you will be fine with whatever happens to you in life

When I sober up, your message is still there. You're right. I will be fine - although your reply is a non-reply, a copycat line, obligatory at most, filling some space between saying and not saying exactly what you mean. I search momentarily for a loophole but find every road leads me back to the same futile conclusion.

You'd never want me. Never be with me. Never find me.

And I knew it was coming. I tell everyone I know that this knowledge makes it easier. I won't see you next semester, anyway.

I'm not sure how to summarize the next few poems so I won't. They're all about the same person though (?!)

Practice Kissing
December 12th

You're 23, and maybe you know more.
I didn't know what your skin felt like until yesterday,
didn't care so much, either,
thought almost in theory-
like we were friends in theory,
I knew you in theory,
in theory, you had swiped right because
you found something about me to be
attractive(?)

I asked you to kiss me for practice. Because,
as you know,
I have a Date(!) with Ben this Friday,
and I really want to impress him. (Unlike Matt.)
and I've never kissed anyone :(
Ben plays electric guitar and he likes Rufus Wainwright,
a marketing major,
and I think I could learn to really like him,
although he doesn't stay up late talking to me
like you do.

Waiting for you was scary but I wasn't afraid;
there were just a couple butterflies up my spine,
and then they were gone.
When I saw you, I thought you were small
and kind of adorable, with black eyes like a puppy's.
Asian-black-white! That's kinda weird!
Friends in theory no longer,
now friends in practice! :)

You like your friend Sarah and think about it a lot,
same way that I think about Mike.
I gave you advice about her and read your short story idea.
I liked that your God wore a three-piece suit.
You wrote fat notes on a greasy napkin because
you wanted to remember what I told you
about first-person, overwriting, fluidity, momentum.
I want you to be happier than anyone else at this stupid college.

I got home a few hours later,
felt bad that I wanted to spend more time with you,
sent the picture I took of you to multiple friends
'cuz I liked how you looked in it.
Called you quickly after dinner.
I feel like I transpose my feelings often(?)
and make shit worse.
Esther to Connor to Seven
and none of those things worked out anyway.
(Why would you?)

Sent you a couple poems
and you didn't really get them
but I was just glad you wanted to.
They were all about Mike.
Actually, the one you didn't understand
was about my nephew
but you won't know that for a while.

Anyway, I asked you if you would teach me to kiss
and in truth I thought about everything else
that comes with that.
Climbing into your lap
with my bra half off my shoulders
and all that shit.
Your tongue in my mouth,
your dick hard, your cries. (This is fun! I'd think.)
But that's my secret, and no one else's.

I was happy that you considered it.
I'd never make you do something you didn't wanna do.
And my stomach rumbled when you said
you couldn't take it emotionally, like:
You might fall in love with me(?)
You're 23 and you know more.
But the thought was like lightning-
suddenly, electrically, I want you to do that.

See you next month(!)

"You meant 'you' in a general sense, right?"
December 14th

Sorry that I lied.

I meant you you when I said:

Fretboard
December 16th

I smoothed my hands over the callouses in your palm
You'd tagged the pull up bar at your gym with your scent, blistered where your body weight kneaded away the flesh
- the tips of my fingers
That have made their way down the fretboard
Are calloused, have lost most sensation

I hope you felt my touch
I hope you felt me

19th Birthday
December 23rd

It's always my birthday
When I'm with you

Second First Date
December 24th

"I can touch you now."

"And you couldn't before?"

I thumb behind your ear, feel coarse, black curls, like the way your skin feels, want to scratch your scalp until you fall asleep at the wheel. You drove two hours to see me - I'll drive you all the way back, steering from the passenger's seat like I'm fifteen again.

"Not really," I answer quietly. "Not how I wanted to."

My best friend is the funniest person on Earth. I have told you this on phone calls, late at night. Her features are so sweet, and she is always amicable, perhaps a shade more amicable than even me, perhaps a shade funnier. She meets you with grace and a bit of shyness that is endearing, in the way that I imagine you would meet my father. "Hold it! Everything's on me," you interrupt when she offers to buy her own baked goods. (What a good guy, I think, against my own nature.)

I really want you to like where I've taken you - a quaint little farm house with homemade pastries, handmade soaps and artisanal home decor. I watch you break apart a chocolate chip cookie with clean fingers, chew on it, tell a story ad nauseam about the best one you'd ever had - I'm charmed by this because every character in this inconsequential tale has a first and last name that you have dug deep to find for me. We're in a public place, yet I touch your cheek. I feel loved to just be sitting next to you, sitting across from her, talking about high school again in my hometown. Blessed, even - which is a feeling so nebulous and self-defeating that I sparsely have reason to feel that way at all.

She takes our hands and links them. And that is the rest of the hour. It feels good to be close to you. "She's so funny," you whisper near the handmade candles once she's left us alone in the shop.

"Funnier than me," I agree, thinking nothing of it.

"No, you're funnier," you tell me. I fix you with a surprised glare. "That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it," you state righteously.

"That's my best friend!" I exclaim. I swat you.

You kiss me - my first kiss - in the dressing room, sharing a padded stool. It's so foreign and strange that I can't even move - your lips are like tempered glass - I wonder how virgin princesses in movies nail it on the first try. "That was weird," I laugh. "I'm really sorry." I wrap my arms around your neck and think: I like you close, I like your heart on mine. "I'll get better."

I know the highest place in the whole county, my childhood home, and I want you to be with me when the sun drags itself below the horizon. When we reach the top of the mountain, we leave the car and walk down the road and it's so bitingly cold that you can barely get your hand out of your pocket to hold mine. In my palm, you place a hand warmer.

We trespass onto my late godfather's next door neighbor's porch. You can see for miles and miles... much farther than you can see in Albany, even from the highest observation deck. The sky is rippling with gold, pink and blue. I'm scared of what might or might not come next. "I wrote you a song," I say, a little nervously, "Merry Christmas." You look mad surprised. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, um..." I rummage around in my pockets to hand you my earbuds. "Listen to it."

"By myself?"

"Yeah..." I've never listened to my own music with someone. The idea makes me blanch.

"No way. No way!" you insist passionately. "I want to experience this with you!"

I acquiesce - without prompting, you put your hand on my waist - ("Damn, Ma - you are curvy") - and sway me with you. Smoother than drink is the touch of your palms, I croon. Make me feel small. There's something funny about the next line; you laugh; you kiss me again. "So good," you murmur. "That is so, so good. Maybe someday, I'll find the words to explain how much I like you, too." The sunset comes and goes very quietly.

The new owner of the property next door catches us huddled outside. She asks us what the hell we're doing and I falsely confess that we live together at my old address in a panic. "Oh," she replies, suddenly very accommodating - and then drives off. "Should have told her we were cousins," I mutter bitterly. You crack up.

In the car, you turn the heat up. I'm so cold until your mouth is on mine - and then kinda licking into mine, and then I'm asking you to climb into my lap, even though you're not at all a tiny dude and I'm not sure of anything, only that I need you closer, much closer. You draw a line into the fog on the windows at some point between my shirt being on and off. I don't even think you're hard until I feel you.

In impenetrable, rural darkness, the glow of the dashboard outlines your features, your parted lips that are glossy from spit and condensation. I melt into each kiss like I've lost cognizance, speak without knowing what'll come next. "I've thought about you," I blurt out with urgency. I'm grossly embarrassed and simultaneously confident in my confession. More uncomfortable would be to press it close to me until it punctured a hole in the wall of my lungs.

"I have, too, Ana..." Your eyes are shining. "...But we don't have to rush anything," you whisper like this car is a porcelain lockbox that can be shattered, exposing us to the cold, to time. "I need you to be comfortable."

"Yeah, but... but..." I gather my courage to persist, breathing, "I want you..." even as I'm scared as hell. The concept is insurmountable but I want to triumph over it like some large mountain, or a marathon, or foreign invaders. There's pleasure in the idea of losing my virginity but I know there will be no pleasure in the action itself; I feel foolish and immature as soon as the words leave my mouth, as they are both foolish and immature. I would mine nothing from that and come home different, more different than you've made me tonight. I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. So there is a wash of relief when you sternly respond: "Let's wait."

Eventually: "I never wanna leave this moment. This is a nice ass moment." A car lights up your windows and I sink into you like dough. Your back feels like any other back but also way better. I scratch the tight curls on your neck. Need you closer.

"We have to," you breathe into the crook of my shoulder. "...Ana Ana Ana Ana Ana Ana Ana." You sigh like it hurts and say my name like it soothes that aching pain. "Ana's my baby."

I'm scared of losing you. Terrified of being with you until I can't even bear the thought of losing you, until my own voice sounds strange without yours following after, until you are the landmark in every photograph, until my days are informed by things you told me on the telephone, until years are defined by anniversaries and not birthdays. I could never confidently want to need you so much. I know how small things sting when all your skin chafes off, when you keep breaking your ankle in hopes it'll heal right; could I ever poison you by loving you? Could I ever hold myself hostage, knowing what I know?

In the movie theater, you rub my knuckles until my eyes drift shut. You don't know how much you pull me from my own body. Feels like I could sleep inside you. "That's so cool," you tell no one in particular between action set pieces. From my rest, I am compelled by some otherworldly force to kiss your cheek and lay on your chest and adore you in silence. Your heart thrums into my neck when the climax of the movie explodes in full color. "That was so cool," you exclaim during the end credits, "Shit was wild!"

We eat hot wings and garlic knots late into the night at a little Italian place. You eat all the meat off of them, absolutely bare bones dry. "Damn, Ma," I tease, "you cleaned that wing up so nice, it could attend the MET Gala. Looks so clean that it could wear a three-piece suit."

You are so... gentle to me. You're my secret, now. Forget fantasy and late nights during finals' week when I composed hour-long speeches between study sessions to confess to you every intimate thought I'd muscled back. No one else will have you now that I do - your mouth hurts divinely and thank God it ain't no one else's hurt. You make me laugh till I'm about ready to split open and that's my cross to bear; let no one else need you; I'm here for it, I'm down for you, always. My body feels like sweet wine in your mouth. I cry your name in the back seat of your Honda because that's all there is left to verbalize - hope you hear what I mean, hope you feel me feel me, baby boy, because that's all I ever really wanted.

Nearing midnight, my phone buzzes twice. Mom wanted me home two hours ago - I'll continue fabricating where I am to keep you, even though in your eyes I can see that you would never ask me to lie to her. I hold your forearm across my breasts and your palm to my cheek. Smoother than drink is the touch of your palms...

I mull over the idea that you'll never understand the whole truth of that lyric - you'll never feel your fingers on your own body and feel the way I feel now, and for a moment I pity you.

My head rests heavy in your lap. "I miss you all the time," I whisper, lifting up my hand to cradle the crook of your jaw. Your lids flutter shut, concealing dark, blown-out eyes, and your mouth parts just enough for my thumb to slip inside. I feel your bottom incisors, a pulse in your cheek; I don't know what you feel, but can only imagine that it feels something like this: sinking into musky ancient tapestries, the space between inhales, a summertime full moon. Maybe closing your eyes to the world and cradling me, tasting me - that could be your hunting ground, your spiritual conduit, your fertile land and hallowed graveyard. I press your knuckles to my lips softly, worshippingly. "Miss you even now."

In This Motel Room, He Did One of the Kindest Things Anyone Has Ever Done For Me
December 29th

Tired of being with him in cars,
parking lots,
grocery stores,
facing him at dining tables
and seeing him in rear view mirrors
or across the dashboard,
where we'll die on impact
if he stares at me too long,
traffic like a machine gun in my ear
(vrrruuUUUMhonkhonkhonkhonk)!

I want him to back up inside me like
a fuckin' Tonka truck,
except, like, with more kinetic energy and force
than there ever was via text.
I'm not sure if this makes sense, but:
the only thing more painful than fucking him
would be to not fuck him,
feel me?

I surreptitiously arranged
(unbeknownst to my parents and loved ones)
to shack up in a well-furnished
royal blue motel room
on the other side of this wasteland,
this New York ghost town,
where religion roars loudly in canyons,
then suddenly dies when touching the bloodstained doorframe.
My voice carries far in his mouth.

Does he feel like love?
He's got an ass that looks like it;
I tell him twenty times that dinner's getting cold
but he just keeps going back for seconds, thirds -
he can't help it.
What the hell? I say, when his head is bobbing
up and down like capsized caramel apples in
the ocean,
What the hell
What the hell
Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God
You're crazy!

Conversely, there is a piece of me
that is propelled by fear.
He's only here while supplies last.
I feel gray when his knee isn't between my thighs,
black when his head isn't resting on my chest.
Don't know what pieces of him will
drizzle down the shower drain
when I'm not looking.
He's snuck between my shoulder blades:
I catch him planting
orchids there.

Five point five times going on six -
a kid's movie plays in the background
that I can't hear over his bubbly mouth,
that Coca-Cola saliva -
he comes
to, all soft, sheened with sweat, brokering a peace
between restfulness and wakefulness.
Can't watch the movie until it's already over.
I let him read Practice Kissing
after he practices kissing me.

I am quietly different, now.
And pretty tipsy,
and starving and holding my pee,
chafed under my nose,
and my right nipple hurts like hell.
When I steal away to the bathroom for a moment,
I wonder with apprehension
if he's altered me.
I look at my naked reflection frankly and am concerned.
My body is tangible, now.
Realized into existence only because he has seen it.

Does he know his culpability?
Effortlessly, he has erased and rewritten
a sentence that used to hold true,
but now would hold no meaning even if
he had embalmed it tenderly, frozen it in the winter sun.
(Just by touching me.)
I can no longer answer my parents honestly.
I can no longer say that I don't remember
being with him
in that royal blue motel room.

His skin could meet mine anywhere,
everywhere, wouldn't matter -
my man, he has made me feel more virginal,
more innocent, more new.
(Maybe he thinks I forgot what he did for me at 4am
because I was drunk and dozing off, but I didn't.)
He is sharper and sweeter than any Muscato wine.
He fills my head with songs.
And when I sleep inside him,
after is very far away:
a whisper, maybe,
or a deep crimson light on a winter blue horizon.

(I'm kinda scared.
I've never had this before.)

Orchids

Ok well I can say for sure my intention at the beginning of this was NOT to finish up the year kind of climactically - I assure you that I was much more surprised than anyone else. It's kinda nice it wraps up so well! Anyway, shout out to all these people... You really affected me this year and I'm thankful for it :)

Here's to being 19!!!! And still being a goddamn virg!!!!