there is a part of me that always exists in that moment,
wrapped up in a blanket, upside down on a basement leather couch
with your stained jeans ten inches from my face.
wrestling is the only light in the room and our best friends are screaming
at a match i never pretended to understand.
it’s summer and i’m eight shades darker than i am during the year,
that deep Puerto Rican tan coating my skin and yet i’m still
blushing and you know i’m blushing and i can see you start to,
upside down, put the pieces together
the
catching-me-telling-you-to-be-safer and the
dancing-a-little-extra-being-a-little-louder and then of course
this,
myself cocooned so close to your leg i can smell the boat oil
on your clothes and see scrapes on your knuckles,
a part of my heart will forever exist there, in you, in that moment
i fell in love with my childhood, the one that was
your own personal movie, my torn-up knees and puberty tears
and horrible singing and inconsolable hair,
my curled-up body on your bedroom floor
and my head in your lap and my clammy hands and mediocre grades
and movies i faked watching and
a heart beating one thousand miles per hour because you were waiting
to kiss me for the first time,
part of me will forever love that girl, that boy, that love so unfiltered, so
concentrated that it still runs in my blood.
but the other part, the part that does work through dinner and
notices constellations and drinks wine on hard Sundays
and goes to the doctor with an insurance card ready and
eats rye bread because it’s healthier and is
still working on
not staying when people who need her refuse to acknowledge anything other than her help—her,
that part of me
is letting you go.
