almost trust you. i almost trust you enough to lay the secrets of the ages into your wicked hold and let you wash over me. silver strings of desire are rising up to bring me down, a liquid pull in my belly as you lure and tease with the crook of your finger. i swear, if i could, i would cut through gravity and tear in half to fall through sky and crash into you. i almost trust that you would be there to enfold me, to press kisses along my neck and whisper that i’m beautiful in the crooked curve of my collarbone. and if my dreams were to carve themselves out of starlight and into reality, i would sigh and dissolve until we were one and moondust washed up on sandy beaches at night. and i would breathe deep and liquefy until my mouth was on yours and our bodies were tangled cells with poetry banding us together. i would give, give, give myself to you so that you might explore the ridges and crests of shoulder and rib and hip. i would surrender the rights to the slopes and crooked angles of my body and fling my desire into the night sky so that all young lovers might follow our northwestern star to where we lay breathless and spent.
Megan Madgwick
I wonder if I’m making excuses for myself. That those are actually reasons why I was a late bloomer, that those are reasons why it takes so much for me to be comfortable with someone physically. To be hyper-aware of sexuality at such a young age. It made me so self-conscious. I’m still so self-conscious. You both did that to me and I wonder how many others it happened to since it happened to me, how many others you touched the way you touched me, are they bitter too, did they know the way you touched, what you did, how much it meant? I didn’t know. Did it make them scared too? Does it still make them scared? How much does it even mean, I still don’t know. How is it that I still don’t know, that I don’t even know my self. You did that to me, I think. People are fucked up. You had to have been, to do what you did to me. You fucked me up too, it’s a cycle.
It’s weird to become aware of the little tricks your mind plays, how you really do suppress things. I think as I became more aware socially of sexuality, I put more & more weight on what happened but forced myself to ignore it at the same time. Sometimes it helps to think that it happens more often than it’s spoken, at least now it does. It didn’t help growing up though, when you don’t know the statistics, when you’re too afraid to tell a single living soul, when you don’t know what it means to be touched like that. When it was all such a battle, it’s always an internal battle. When you’re too scared to even admit it to yourself. It didn’t happen. It happened though, it did. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe? You tell the lie to yourself so many times you start to believe it. But it did happen. You must’ve been really fucked up. You must’ve really fucked me up.
But another you, a different you this time, a you I found fifteen years later. I trusted you this much, but not enough to tell you what it meant for me to trust a man in this way. You never knew, you won’t ever know because we’ll never be hip to hip again. I’ll never let you touch me like this again. That’s a lie, I probably would. It really, really sucks knowing that I would. I would because for the first time in my life it was mutual, I let someone in and let it mean something for me and I think it meant something for you too. But it didn’t mean enough, maybe it would’ve meant more if I told you, if I could’ve told you. But I felt a constrictor around my throat every time I tried, every time I felt like this is it, I could open up to you, I can tell you what happened to me, but I never did. Maybe if I showed you more of myself you would’ve stayed, you would’ve realized what it meant for me to let you touch me, because I so hate being touched, I so hate it and I’m still scared of it. But I did let you touch me and I realized I could love it. Maybe I’ll love it again, with someone else, someone who won’t make me feel like I’m being suffocating every time I try to spit it out. It wasn’t you though, it was the situation. I’m tired of being afraid of it, of saying it out loud. It’s such a strange feeling to have the words right at the edge of your lips. It’s like feeling like I have to throw them up, rid them from my body and mind, only I can’t. When will I be able to? I don’t know though, I never know. I don’t know anything. I hope for many things though.
