when I was wild

She used to know me so well
back in the days when I was wild
and weird, dancing to the music in my head
like the side walk had no other passengers

Her hands used to fit so well with mine
and I could pretend we were soul mates
from the way our bodies fit
and fucked and laughed
at a world we hadn’t yet learnt to fear

She was the passion of my passed out state
and I wanted to be the freak
she could show off with pride
because what was the point of anything
if you couldn’t piss people off doing it

I lived like it was challenge to the world
a permanent fuck you to everyone
who wanted to tell me I was wrong
never thinking that maybe one day
I would have to turn around
and say ...

She couldn’t love the parts of me
that made her friends and family
uncomfortable
my wide-eyed openness foreign
to a room full of people who preferred
their own white-lied suburban fantasies

I remember when her skin
was soft on my tongue
as I fingered her slowly in the dark
her pleasure echoing off my lips
in the silence of a house
where too many people were listening
for the sounds of us fucking

I remember the scorn of old couples
as we held hands in the street
and I’d kiss her right there and then
because no one was going to tell me
who I could or couldn’t love

I remember being told we
couldn’t fuck in her father’s house
never mind all the men he bought home

I remember we fucked anyway
... in silence

I remember the way she changed
from rebellious kissing on the street
to “no, we can’t hold hands in public anymore”
and the “oh, my god,
don’t you think he’s hot?” rhetoric
kissing the boy she took to the school dance
as though I no longer mattered to her heart

I remember how I broke my own heart
after taking another year to walk away
and she slid into someone else’s bed
while I tried to drink the love from my bones
and throw it up in every gutter
that whispered her name

© Indie Adams 2016