Dirty Letters

by Vi Keeland

My mother DIED, Luca. She’s gone.

He was always honest, and his joking around was never mean-spirited. It was more like his way of showing me that whatever I was obsessing over wasn’t such a big deal.

“Plus, then there’s the coitus.” I assumed I’d heard him wrong. “The what?” “Coitus—you know, the unison of the male and female genitalia. It’s been a while since you’ve been with a man.” Oh God. “Um. Yeah. I got it. Let’s just take it one step at a time.”

So I feel about bacon sort of how I feel about a lot of things in life. I stay away from it, but I can’t help the fact that I like it. (Sort of like porn, maybe?)

In my next life, I want to come back as a pig and be adopted by you. Is that weird?

“I said that because when I tell you we’re going to do any type of exposure therapy, you stress on the days leading up to the outing. This way, you have less time to stress in advance.” “Except now five days’ worth of stress will get jammed into a fifteen-minute car ride to the store, and my head might explode.”

You might not be where you want to be, but you’re also not where you were yesterday. Each day is a baby step. You just keep looking forward and taking them, and I promise one day you’re going to look back and be surprised how far those tiny little steps have taken you.”

It felt like maybe he didn’t have blind faith in me—to trust that I’d like him for the person he was inside, regardless of whatever his issues were.

He’d been pushing me to take little steps, to learn to feel happiness here, instead of waiting to get there.

“He’s looking for birds, not Beyoncé.”

I have no balls. No goddamn balls. Luca has bigger balls than I do. Shit. Balls. FUUUUCK.

He moved into the driver’s seat. I’d only told them to move as my excuse for coming out here. I didn’t want them to actually move, because then what? I could lose her.

What comes easy won’t last long, and what lasts long won’t come easy.”

Honestly, a part of me was just still so damn angry that she’d given up on us.

“Anxious. But even if I poop my pants, I’m not running away.” “If you poop your pants, love, I’ll be the one running away.” I winked.