He said he loved you first and you fell for it. You fell for it all. The way your breath fogged up the windows, the moon licking your lap, the mosquitoes hitting his parked car. You fell hard. Him, he just sat there not facing you, waiting. And then you did it, just what he wanted, gave him the okay, let go of every night he didn’t call you, let go of him being too embarrassed to go anywhere but his bed with you. You said it: “I love you too.” That was it. He turned, grinned a little, and climbed the seat to slap himself into you. He was too tall and asked you to push your chair back as far as you could. You did. Good girl. When it was over you thought, “That’s it” as he went out into the hot night to dispose of the evidence. That’s it. First time you were fucked and you were even further from knowing what an orgasm felt like. He came back, turned the keys in the ignition, and said, “I guess your mom’s wondering where you are right now.” You were smiling too big to answer. You just looked at him, looked and looked and looked, until he finally turned back to you and said, “What are you staring at?”

The next time you wanted to touch someone, you were the experienced one. A few sloppy times in which someone else did all the work and suddenly you knew what you were doing. You were watching a movie. His parents were in their bed, maybe sleeping, maybe about to do the same thing you were, maybe questioning what their son was doing in the garage. The movie ended and the blue light of the credits painted his face in questions. It was snowing outside. You pushed the blanket off of both of you, shivered a little, and kissed him. When you ended up on the quilted bed together, he looked up at you in anticipation, and you looked around the room, waiting for someone to tell you what to do. You weren’t used to having control over your body. Then you took off your shirt and he moaned a little. You liked the sound of it enough to move in with him a year later. To not ask questions. To swallow all of your insecurities about the future. When he broke up with you, he watched you cry on his bed for hours. You realized, as you sat there unable to stop and he simply stared at you, that this was the first time he’d made you moan.

This is a poem that you might be too young and too exhausted to write. Thinking about being touched is not fun. You could write about what happened next. Write about your next sloppy attempt at love-the way you both used alcohol to like yourselves more. Drinking so much at a frat party that you had to be helped home. Him in his lonely house with his game shows and sixteen pack. Write about that other one, with the buttoned-up shirt and receding hairline, and the hushed hurried sex he yanked out of you. How accepting your body grew. How people you never wanted touched you and you collapsed into them. How you thought it was easier to wait it out then put up a fight. How much energy it took to finally quit your job, to delete their number, to block their email, and how still, they tried to contact you. You could write about the good times. The ones you liked. The ones that kissed you before and after, so sweetly that they tasted like “please” and “thank you.” The ones who have called you “sexually experienced” since and how you want to laugh and laugh, or cry, or write a poem for them, explaining. You could write about what happened next. But it’s still happening. It hasn’t stopped. You don’t unlearn survival tricks once you stop needing them. Now even when you touch yourself you are separated, to a degree. It hasn’t stopped. It hasn’t let off. You are still here, trapped in this body, with these memories, and these hands, taking whatever they’d like of you.