Later, We

Your hands were heating pads.

Your fingers, soft and lithe, heating everything that they touched.

We started with our fingertips,

yours between mine, casting shadows on your bedroom walls.

We marveled that the shadows looked like twigs above a burning fire.

And so we stopped.

And made each other marshmallows.

You taught me what it was

to be chocolate on graham crackers,

place them on a metal rod

and cook them over an open fire,

chocolate burning and rolling across my tongue.

Also, like a campfire,

we traded secrets and pinky promises.

Your darkest secret

was that you hated everything that you loved.

Later, we rode your bicycles through the town that you grew up in,

over the railroad tracks,

across the old bridge where you told me you once took a lover.

It was just a kiss, but he stays with you still.

You and I shared that same phenomenon,

in that same spot.

Along the path, splitting up to your house,

we took turns being the leader and the follower.

Again and again, we would change positions.

Had our tires created tracks, you would have seen one tread crossing another crossing the other, pushing and crossing over each other,

like the way our bodies did, in time.

You had to get stitches only once when I was around.

I took you to the doctor and you told me

that you hoped your future husband would do the same.

I assumed the pain that I felt in that moment was sympathy

for the doctor pulling on your bruised and bleeding elbow.

It was not.

That night, you convinced me,

as you always did,

to try something new.

I ran topless -but with a bra- across my dorm room floor.

No one besides my sister had ever seen that skin before.

You convinced me to dye my hair brown.

You told me I looked sexy and I should have more confidence with the boys.

I didn't have the heart to tell either of us that they

were not what I was interested in.

I sat in the back of your car as you and your drug dealer smoked weed.

You asked me about the experience

and I laughed and almost told you

that I was tensed and waiting

to jump into the front of the car

if either of you were too stoned to turn the wheel yourselves.

Later, when he left,

we baked no-bake cookies and bought chips because you said they were the best combinations for romance movies

and ghost stories

and hot tubs.

I smoked weed for the first time there in that hot tub surrounded by the smell of chlorine

and refer.

And you.

In time, I stopped thinking about the inch or so of extra skin around my middle

and started thinking about yours.

You had much more than me

and you

were a goddess.

When we had dried ourselves and went inside

you said you were scared of the ghost you had planted in your house,

the one of your father.

I held you then and I held you later in our dorm room when you cried and told me how you felt

responsible.

You said the darkest thing you know is when you look in the mirror and you see dark eyes,

unrecognizable,

like there is someone else behind them.

Ghost stories never felt real until I met you.

That night,

You laid your body on top of mine

rough like logs

and then softer like marshmallows

and I knew then what it was to create heat out of nothing

but two objects

and a small span of oxygen.

The next day

you took my hand in public,

in the town they called Raystown,

in the chilly cold air,

and I felt the possibility.

Then,

on the way home, we got lost,

and under the dark trees

you drew ghosts in the branches

and said I would never make you feel

safe enough

to be happy.

The trees looked like caricatures at first,

and then just twigs,

and then the dark shadows moving behind glowing wood.

And then you reminded me that you hated everything that you loved.

You hated everything you loved.

You hated everything

that you

loved.