Candace

This summer

Love wasn't in the air the night you unbuttoned my shirt and kissed my skin. No, love definitely wasn't in the air the night we spend in heat of moment, sweating and tumbling and fumbling on your linens.

I can't remember much but I can remember the beginning. The burn of the acid bleeding and gushing past my tongue and down my throat. The noises, and then your silence. The clumsiness and then the awkward kisses.

You had a garden of dark brown hair growing from your scalp with dirt eyes. You had a protruding belly button and clown feet. You smelt like my uncle in his coffin.

You didn't ask me if you could take my virginity. You just assumed I would give it to you. I always wonder where you put it, if you take good care of it and how it is doing. I always imagine you put it in a shiny jar with a sticky label reading "Candace's Virginity", although I could be wrong - you always seemed like a box sort of a person. I imagine you keep it next to your bed and show visitors when they visit, "And this is Candace's Virginity." You'd tell them, sticking your gaunt chest out proudly. They'd applaud you.

I've never made love, you know. Never. I checked afterwords, but love was still missing. I think we did it wrong.

I saw you once more. You were pushing a trolley and the muscles in your arms were thick bands around your bones, they must keep him together, I thought. You didn't see me, blue wide-eyes from the edge of the corner, but I noted everything about you and wrote in my diary that night, filling in gaps.

I noted everything. I noted all that I could remember from that night, and all I got was: He had vodka on his breath, dark tangles of hair, and a bumpy stomach. He is covered in miles of dark skin, like dirt and like soil, and he took me away. He whispered into my ear and it was potent, but I was numb all over and he holding me from falling to my knees. There was a window above us, and a streetlight that shone through saying don't mind me, as it sent its light to his abs. And they were wonderful. I didn't say yes, he didn't ask, he didn't say anything. Maybe he was a mute. But his breath was far too loud for a mute. He took my skin in his teeth and my jeans at my toes, but the rest is a blur or hue and maybe vomit.

Why didn't you say goodbye? Sometimes I think about you. I have to hold my ribcage tight to try and stop my heart from beating too fast and I hold my breath in my palms. Lights outside draw silhouettes of you, you, you and I want that warmth back.

It's an ache, a wonderful ache but a terrible ache. I dream of planting seeds beneath your flesh and having exotic flowers erupt from the soil in a heap of soft petals and green leaves. I pick them all and hand them to you in colorful bunches of lovely. Birds dance around your empty face as I clutch the edges of my dress and I ask, "May I have my virginity back now?"

You never answer me.