He ran his sticky fingers up my leg

The sour taste of his tongue still in my mouth

My body an untuned violin bow

Shaking and out of pitch

Chills and bushes, the nervous field stared ahead

Warm skin touching mine as my body tensed

Reluctant and stiff, guilt flooding my brain

As every “please” piled on my bony shoulders

I was so easy to break.

And the small trees looked romantic,

Arched branches with moonlit buds

But we didn’t go near them

Because they hurt too much to touch.

As we lay down on the sharp, hard ground

In my sports bra and athletic shorts,

my mouth felt too heavy to speak, and I knew

I was alone with no other voices to guide me.

The night was cool while my heart beat fast

Braces and indecisiveness

No way to skip over the hardest parts

I still don’t know what it is.

Fingers on my shiny skin, the smell of campfire in my hair

He kept asking for what I didn’t want

The word “no” couldn’t swim to my lips

So thirty minutes later,

I washed him off in the cabin sink.

Goosebumps and orange light buzzed without heat.

Dizzy vision, thoughts dying before they came to my head

Small, cold body in the mirror, disgusting and desirable

The past summer I was frizzy hair, funny stories, pigtails and a pain

But that night, I was hungry and skinny, stable yet unsure

Flinching thighs and vanished shirt,

Him lying feet away.

Friends laughing when I told them

Exchanged the secret for silence and shame.

I lost it in a single day

But I still don’t know its name.

Butterflies aren’t goosebumps, just how shyness isn’t fear.

I didn’t know the right words to say, so I barely spoke at all.

I know he didn’t mean to cause me any harm.

Maybe it was my fault-

Paralyzed lips can be hard to read.

Maybe he wasn’t thinking of me at all.

I know I wanted to be wanted,

But I didn’t want it like this.