He will not be your first love, you just want it so badly
that you’ll take what he’s left you and call it a dream.
His fingers wander inside you, inside his two-door Honda after school,
the weather is overcast it’s Wednesday and there is no one else.
He tells you he loves your body and you make it enough,
collect praise like pennies in the mud, rinse and count them up.
In a few years, Elle will finally tell you about that drunken night
—hours before you let him cum in your mouth on your bedroom floor,
your safe place—when he grabbed her waist
and whispered, his breath Svedka & weed & spearmint,
you know I just talk to her for pussy. She doesn’t mean anything to me.
You shake your head like nothing and for a little while,
feel like nothing. The college boy calls you a tease
when you refuse to undress in his bed so you believe him,
let his sweaty hands slide from your knees to your hips
to the string of your sweatpants. The man
on the Manhattan sidewalk tells you to smile girl!
so you smile. Now, you have trouble breathing fully
and it doesn’t end, even in the arms of a new man
who calls you love and means it, some days you feel like an angel.
You wake, water your pain like rain on your African violet
or your soil-splattered car. Water heals. Drink it. He will
beg you to trust him and you will do your best.
