My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.

It’s both creepy and out of my control, this ability I have to notice so much about other people when I’m positive no one notices anything at all about me.

I begin to pay attention to the ways he seems to contradict himself, how he went to Harvard but tells stories about growing up poor, the way he sprinkles eloquent speech with obscenities and pairs tailored blazers and ironed shirts with scuffed hiking boots.

I wonder if this is flirting, but it can’t be. Flirting is supposed to be fun and this is too heavy for fun.

I start to realize the point isn’t really whether I like the books; it’s more about him giving me different lenses to see myself through.

Half kisses can be forgotten but full kisses cannot.

“I’m going to ruin you.”

“People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful,”

I don’t say it, but sometimes I feel like that’s exactly what he’s doing to me—breaking me apart, putting me back together as someone new.

It's too early for her to say that