&etc.

"I kissed a feminist once," he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders maybe “I kissed a feminist once,” and everybody laughs “she was cold as ice,” he says and he doesn’t mention how I turned warm beneath his fingers, heated up like embers and reduced his bed to flame and ashes “God was she mean,” he says but he hasn’t forgotten the time I told him to be kind to himself, to purge the poison from his veins and scrape the smoke from his lungs “I love you I love you I love you” I said, “please love yourself too” "I kissed a feminist once," he says, to loud guffaws, an elbow in his side and he doesn’t say “her lips were the softest thing to ever brush my collar bone” he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind” or “she covered me like a blanket” or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed” he doesn’t say “I loved that storm of a girl, I loved her heavy at 4am I loved her like pennies at the bottom of a fountain like memorized freckles I loved her like depth perception like opposable thumbs I loved her I loved her I loved her” and instead he shrugs that heavy thing off his shoulders and shrugs the feel of my lips off his chest and he says, "she was a crazy bitch anyway"