#warmish

Kissing her is coming home to a house that is filled with someone else’s things. It is like a long car ride in an SUV littered with old gum wrappers, like drinking lukewarm wine straight out of the bottle on a summer night, something that makes my throat burn and my stomach fill with warmth and I want to fall in love with the taste but I’m not sure that I can. Kissing her is a dirty type of clean; it is the grit underneath my fingernails and the song stuck in my head. Kissing her is loud and lonely and new, and it terrifies me. She pulls away, now, catching her breath as she shifts her weight on the bed. Her hair, still damp from the shower, hangs down over one pale eye and she tucks it behind her ear. Her lips are red and swollen from our kiss, like strawberries puckering on the vine in the golden sun. I look at her hips, my eyes tracing the curve where body meets mattress, and I feel something like guilt twist my stomach. I roll onto my back and blink up at the ceiling, at the little paper stars she hung from the window sill, at the dried flowers taped to her mirror. I find her in the pieces of her room because I cannot look at her body without feeling the familiar ache, the throbbing need to touch, to hold. I hate how loving her makes me feel sick. She moves closer to me and I am flooded with warmth where her skin meets my own--here, her leg wrapped around mine. Here, her head resting in the crook of my arm. Here, her nose against my cheek. Here, her breath on my neck. Goosebumps prickle on my skin.  This, this, this. “Jade,” she says, and she whispers my name like maybe it matters. Her voice makes me tremble, the smell of perfume on her skin starts a fire in my throat. Her hand finds mine (here) and she pulls me towards her, moving upwards on the bed so our faces are touching.  “Jade, are you okay?” I can’t answer. Her thigh, touching mine. Her nose, touching mine. Her forehead, touching mine. Here. Here. Here. She kisses me again, then, and I hate myself because I pull away first. Her hand finds mine again and she kisses my cheek. “Jade, what’s wrong?” And suddenly I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her how loving her makes me feel dirty, and it isn’t her fault but I don’t know how to make it stop. I want to tell her that I want to love her, but a part of me will always pervert this good thing; a part of me will always scream that this is wrong and this is bad and this is sinful; a part of me will always refuse to hold her in the way that she needs to be held. I want to tell her that I do not think I will marry a girl, even if I want to. I will have a good Christian wedding at my parents' church and I will wear a white dress. And that night, I will make love to this man who my parents love more than I do and we will raise our children in a small town. I will visit my family on Christmas. I will smile when people ask me how I am. I will throw away every rainbow sweater I own and learn to fall in love with the color grey. I will hold my breath, and maybe then I will feel clean. She moves closer, almost as if she can hear my thoughts. She wraps her arms around me and whispers my name over and over again. It is a song, a prayer, a lament, and it is good.  I kiss her quickly, softly, and ache because this is what I want more than anything in the world. I want to cut off all of my hair and hold her hand in the city. I want to move to a little apartment in a big town and ride the subway to work. I want to speed down the freeway at 3am and sing the words to every song at the top of my lungs. I want to love her and not feel like I am doing something wrong. I kiss her again, again, again. She tastes like bubblegum and summer wine, and letting her go feels impossible. “I love you,” I say softly, and then I am crying as she says it back. She brushes the tears off my face as they come and holds me like I am the last thing left on earth  “I love you, too.” She breathes. “I love you like the summer sun and bare feet. I love you like stargazing and rooftops and loud music. I love you like cold coffee and old movies and big sweaters. I love you, Jade, I love you, I love you.” I am still crying and she is still holding me. I want to feel clean and normal, I want to feel safe and new. I want to feel the good things that everyone else feels when they are in love. Instead, I just feel as though I have faulty wiring. This isn’t the first time I’ve collapsed like this. It isn’t the first time I’ve thought about the way my mother’s shoulders stiffen when I talk about girls and the way my father’s eyes darken for a moment when I come home, cheeks glowing. I remember asking them if they cried when I told them that I do not love like they do, and they did not reply. For a moment, I hate my heart for making my parents regret creating me, for making whatever god there is deem me unfit, for making the world view me as a fetish and a liar but not a human. But through it all, she holds me. I am breaking in her arms and still, she holds me, her arms safe and warm and strong and home. “Jade. Jade, it’s okay.” She murmurs, and her lips graze my ear. “It’s okay, Jade. It’s okay. I’m here.” And for once, maybe--here in her arms, here in her bed--I believe her.