"I didn’t love him.I barely liked him.But he was heat at the peak of summer,and he kissed like I..."

“I didn’t love him.

I barely liked him.

But he was heat at the peak of summer,

and he kissed like I was his last meal–

And I was looking for a body to drown in.

Back then, I had a candy-coated heart,

like flowers tucked in the pages of a hymnal,

and he had the thick, calloused hands

of a working man.

He talked like a friend,

but touched like an animal

and my bubblegum chest wanted that

in ways it couldn’t understand yet.

He asked what colors I kissed in

and the poet in me cracked open and spilled over–

Exposed like an open wound,

like all the soft, pink parts of me

I didn’t know about.

He was a means to an end:

my Machiavellian loss of innocence.

I don’t regret him,

but sometimes I wish I did.”

- First, by Ashe Vernon