mind over matter

1. I went home with him because I was fifteen and he was eighteen and the liquor hadn’t crawled up my spine to my head but it was swirling through my hands and I was all over him. He kept calling me by the wrong name and I didn’t correct him. I was never drunk but I woke up in an empty bed with a hangover anyway.  2. I went home with him because I was sixteen and that was the thing to do. Fuck him and then show up at school the next day with messy hair and whisper with your friends about the things he said to you in the dark. I was black hair and light pink lips and I thought I had stars on my tongue but I was just swallowing my own teeth. 3. I went home with him because I was seventeen and I was in love. The kind of love that’s hidden in every part of your body. You know, like when you think you’re over him but then you feel it underneath your fingernail or the edge of your left wrist or a bit of skin on your cheek. The kind of love you can’t get rid of and you’ll find it years later, under your lip, the back of your throat. Things were supposed to work out, they’re always supposed to work out but they never really do. We didn’t. 4. I went home him with him because I was almost eighteen and I was breathing fine when I wasn’t thinking about it. But I was always thinking about it. And it hurt. These things always hurt. He was supposed to alleviate the pain but all he did was give me a hickey my mother noticed. 5. I went home with him because I was eighteen and he was someone to kiss but I cried when he touched me because his hands grabbed me the way you used to when I was seventeen. I found you again inside of my chest.

I was lucky to be in a relationship for a long time where so many coincidences happened within the relationship, almost like finishing somebody’s sentences. I’ve been lucky to be, without sounding loopy, almost psychically connected on another level with someone. It really set that relationship apart from others that felt good but maybe, I realized, weren’t as meaningful in my big, karmic picture of life. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been feeling well for four years. Eventually, I decided to move on and try something new. I’m traditional, I guess, looking for something that makes everything even more beautiful than it already is.