You: barefoot on the stone.
How many weeks ago was this when you buzzed me in with a slight grin? This was the second time I came to see you and it was cold. You had a new tattoo on your bicep that you flexed to show me as I guessed the letters.
I didn’t ask what kind of doctor you were and I only glanced long enough at the diplomas to get your full name: framed and on the wall. You: lying sideways all night like the rest of our lives had been put on hold.
Me: Barefoot in your bed because you said not to sleep in it with socks. What if they’re dirty, babe?
Even with the two letters at the end of your name you still had a childlike way you went about getting me to kiss you: puckering your lips from a distance until I leaned in. We talked a few days ago.
You say you're bigger now, a giant maybe. When I contact you, you're always reading and studying. A picture of you in Japan, standing far enough away so I can’t fully grasp your face, is saved in my phone. I wonder if you’ll be alone forever, reading. I wonder who took the picture.
The middle word on your upper back, the first tattoo, you make disappear as your muscles come together: two mountain ranges. Suddenly, I’m the child. I'm the girl in the Sunday school dress, blushing. You knew what this did to me.
As I stand under the hot water in the shower, my skin reddening, I hope you aren't working late tonight, but I tell myself: He likely is. Or he's reading. So I scrub.
Men are nice to me. They buy me dinner and drinks.
I don’t know why. I don’t deserve these nice things and I don’t even give them head.
But not you. We never got dinner. We kept to your living room and bedroom and you asked me if I was comfortable with only being a top. I said I was although I wasn't.
Uncomfortably, I glanced at the pictures of a gun you wanted to purchase. When I asked you what for, you looked at me, puzzled. Just to have, babe.
You drove me home in the morning and the sun barely cut through the grey, colliding sky. I didn't know what to talk about and I hadn't slept well that night. This was the last time I saw you. We had sex but I didn't fuck you.
We made plans. Here I am. Waiting to see you a third time. I dry my body with a towel. I critique my uneven eyes in the mirror.
We watched Law and Order before bed. I don't remember what happened in the episode. I don't even remember the things we talked about now. Instead my eyes traveled up and down your book case: thick-spines marked with names I did not recognize; that was a first.
Me: leaning against the wall of your laundry room, thinking of how young I am. A heaviness was sinking in amongst the flourescent lights that paled your skin as you gathered clothes.
I could see your scalp. This heaviness was a new form, yet it was so recognizeable, like the small hairs that creep to my knuckles. It was in that weight that I told myself I won't see you again after tonight.
But I am waiting for the green light to traverse on flourescently lit buses that rattle in the streets of the city and pale our skin. I am waiting for you to give me the signal and I'll skip through side streets and alleys only to watch you barefoot and grinning on the other side of the gate. I'm home, babe.
Here I am waiting and I don't hear a word. Two hours have passed, pulling at my skin. Maybe if I had fucked you in the first place then you wouldn't be able to get me off your mind. Maybe if I had done more than just given you head. Maybe if I stripped my skin off and I was nothing but muscle.
Me: barefoot in your bathroom, brushing my teeth with my finger before I returned to the couch to kiss you.
I wasn't so handsome back then but as another hour passes I'm thinking, maybe I haven't become more handsome.
Me: silent on the couch as your morals and politics conflicted with my own. My toes: curling at the base of the couch. I wished I hadn't been barefoot; the hardwood floor was coming down from its first frost.
I couldn't sleep that night in your bed, the second and last time I saw you. I stared out your lone window that looked into a blue alleyway. I saw nothing in that alley the entire night. Not a single rodent. Not a single soul. An empty crevice, an abandoned vessel.
Your garage was underground, florescent; I don't remember what your car looked like. You moved the stethoscope from the passenger seat after I opened the door. And when I said I didn't know what to talk about, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. I knew all the questions I wanted to ask but I kept it to one. And your answers, delivered convincingly, as though we rehearsed this. Why does this matter, babe?
We didn't speak of these things; I picked at them. I couldn't tell you why it mattered. Everything about you I despised except your skin. But I went for it. I went for it with innocence and passion. And you: clinical and discrete, defensive and straight. Don't be such a faggot about this, okay?
I exited the car on a corner in front of a 711. I walked up the hill because I was embarrassed for you to see where I lived. I let your words stumble behind me, spinning on the concrete down to the train tracks. And weeks later, I contact you again, and you say you'll be home around eight. I'm bigger now,
babe.
But we only grow in so many ways, and it is never exponential. And here I am, cleaning my apartment to pass the time, imagining how much more colossal your body has grown. That growth should be all I expect of you and all I expect of myself.
How many weeks ago was this when you buzzed me in with a slight grin? This was the second time I came to see you and it was cold. You had a new tattoo on your bicep that you flexed to show me as I guessed the letters.
I didn’t ask what kind of doctor you were and I only glanced long enough at the diplomas to get your full name: framed and on the wall. You: lying sideways all night like the rest of our lives had been put on hold.
Me: Barefoot in your bed because you said not to sleep in it with socks. What if they’re dirty, babe?
Even with the two letters at the end of your name you still had a childlike way you went about getting me to kiss you: puckering your lips from a distance until I leaned in. We talked a few days ago.
You say you're bigger now, a giant maybe. When I contact you, you're always reading and studying. A picture of you in Japan, standing far enough away so I can’t fully grasp your face, is saved in my phone. I wonder if you’ll be alone forever, reading. I wonder who took the picture.
The middle word on your upper back, the first tattoo, you make disappear as your muscles come together: two mountain ranges. Suddenly, I’m the child. I'm the girl in the Sunday school dress, blushing. You knew what this did to me.
As I stand under the hot water in the shower, my skin reddening, I hope you aren't working late tonight, but I tell myself: He likely is. Or he's reading. So I scrub.
Men are nice to me. They buy me dinner and drinks.
I don’t know why. I don’t deserve these nice things and I don’t even give them head.
But not you. We never got dinner. We kept to your living room and bedroom and you asked me if I was comfortable with only being a top. I said I was although I wasn't.
Uncomfortably, I glanced at the pictures of a gun you wanted to purchase. When I asked you what for, you looked at me, puzzled. Just to have, babe.
You drove me home in the morning and the sun barely cut through the grey, colliding sky. I didn't know what to talk about and I hadn't slept well that night. This was the last time I saw you. We had sex but I didn't fuck you.
We made plans. Here I am. Waiting to see you a third time. I dry my body with a towel. I critique my uneven eyes in the mirror.
We watched Law and Order before bed. I don't remember what happened in the episode. I don't even remember the things we talked about now. Instead my eyes traveled up and down your book case: thick-spines marked with names I did not recognize; that was a first.
Me: leaning against the wall of your laundry room, thinking of how young I am. A heaviness was sinking in amongst the flourescent lights that paled your skin as you gathered clothes.
I could see your scalp. This heaviness was a new form, yet it was so recognizeable, like the small hairs that creep to my knuckles. It was in that weight that I told myself I won't see you again after tonight.
But I am waiting for the green light to traverse on flourescently lit buses that rattle in the streets of the city and pale our skin. I am waiting for you to give me the signal and I'll skip through side streets and alleys only to watch you barefoot and grinning on the other side of the gate. I'm home, babe.
Here I am waiting and I don't hear a word. Two hours have passed, pulling at my skin. Maybe if I had fucked you in the first place then you wouldn't be able to get me off your mind. Maybe if I had done more than just given you head. Maybe if I stripped my skin off and I was nothing but muscle.
Me: barefoot in your bathroom, brushing my teeth with my finger before I returned to the couch to kiss you.
I wasn't so handsome back then but as another hour passes I'm thinking, maybe I haven't become more handsome.
Me: silent on the couch as your morals and politics conflicted with my own. My toes: curling at the base of the couch. I wished I hadn't been barefoot; the hardwood floor was coming down from its first frost.
I couldn't sleep that night in your bed, the second and last time I saw you. I stared out your lone window that looked into a blue alleyway. I saw nothing in that alley the entire night. Not a single rodent. Not a single soul. An empty crevice, an abandoned vessel.
Your garage was underground, florescent; I don't remember what your car looked like. You moved the stethoscope from the passenger seat after I opened the door. And when I said I didn't know what to talk about, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. I knew all the questions I wanted to ask but I kept it to one. And your answers, delivered convincingly, as though we rehearsed this. Why does this matter, babe?
We didn't speak of these things; I picked at them. I couldn't tell you why it mattered. Everything about you I despised except your skin. But I went for it. I went for it with innocence and passion. And you: clinical and discrete, defensive and straight. Don't be such a faggot about this, okay?
I exited the car on a corner in front of a 711. I walked up the hill because I was embarrassed for you to see where I lived. I let your words stumble behind me, spinning on the concrete down to the train tracks. And weeks later, I contact you again, and you say you'll be home around eight. I'm bigger now,
babe.
But we only grow in so many ways, and it is never exponential. And here I am, cleaning my apartment to pass the time, imagining how much more colossal your body has grown. That growth should be all I expect of you and all I expect of myself.