and as we scrunch together
my ass bumps Aman’s front.
I don’t move away.
I whisper over my shoulder,
“We should still go.”
Aman’s finger pulls on one of my curls.
“I didn’t know you liked Drake enough
to get caught cutting.”
I lean back against him,
feel his body pressed against mine.
“Drake isn’t the one that I like.”
The Day
We are side by side
sitting on our park bench.
Aman slides his arm around my shoulder
and pulls me closer to him.
Today there are no headphones,
no music, just us.
He brushes his lips across my forehead
and I shiver from something other than cold.
His fingers tip up my chin;
my hands instantly get sweaty and I can’t look at him
so I stare at his eyebrows: cleanly arched,
no stray hairs, prettier than any girl’s,
and I lean in trying to figure out
if he waxes or threads.
Then he’s leaning in too and I know
I have one moment to make a decision.
So I press my lips to his.
His mouth is soft against mine.
Gently, he bites my bottom lip.
And then his tongue slides in my mouth.
It’s messier than I thought it’d be.
He must notice, because
his tongue slows down.
And my heart is one of Darwin’s finches learning to fly.
Wants
As much as boys and men
have told me all of the things
they would like to do to my body,
this is the first time I’ve actually wanted
some of those things done.
At My Train Stop
My train pulls slowly into the station
so I take my hand out of Aman’s.
He looks at me with a question on his face
and I can feel the heat creep up my cheeks.
He’s asking me something
but I can’t hear a word he’s saying
because I keep getting distracted by his lips
and the fact that I now know how they taste.
“X, did you hear me?
I’ll text you later. Maybe we can go out this weekend?
To Reuben’s Halloween party?”
I hop off the train without giving him an answer,
without waving at him through the window.
With too many things to say and nothing to say at all.
What I Don’t Tell Aman
I can’t date.
I can’t be seen on my block with boys.
I can’t have a boy call my cell phone.
I can’t hold hands with a boy.
I can’t go to his house.
I can’t invite him to mine.
I can’t hang out with him and his friends.
I can’t go to the movies with any boy other than Twin.
I can’t go to teen night at the club.
I can’t have a boyfriend.
I can’t fall in love.
Whenever we text late at night
I avoid mentioning making plans.
I tell him “I just want to live in the moment.”
Because I don’t want to tell him all the things I can’t do.
But I also shouldn’t kiss a boy in the smoke park . . .
and yet, I did that, too.
Kiss Stamps
Later, when I walk into confirmation class
I know I’m wearing Aman’s kiss
like a bright red sweater.
Anyone who looks at me
will know I know what it means to want.
In that way. Because I didn’t want to stop kissing.
And we didn’t.
Until his hands moved under
my shirt and I jumped at the chill.
Maybe I jumped at something else.
Guilt? How fast we’re moving?
I don’t know, but I knew it was time to stop.
But I didn’t want to.
I mean, I guess I did.
It’s confusingto know
you shouldn’t be doing something,
that it might go too far,
but still wanting to do it anyway.
I don’t whisper with Caridad,
or make eye contact with anyone,
or question Father Sean,
or look at the cross
bearing an all-knowing God who, if he exists,
saw everything, everything
that happened in the smoke park.
And how much I enjoyed it.
The Last Fifteen-Year-Old
Okay. I know. It’s not that deep to kiss a guy.
It’s just a kiss, some tongue, little kids kiss all the time,
probably not with tongue (that’d be weird).
Boys have wanted to kiss me
since I was eleven, and back then I didn’t want to kiss them.
And then it was grown-ass boys, or legit men,
giving me sneaky looks, and Mami told me I’d have to pray extra
so my body didn’t get me into trouble.
And I knew then what I’d known since my period came:
my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out
of the body God gave me. My body was a problem.
And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it.
I wanted to forget I had this body at all.
So when everyone in middle school was playing truth or dare,
or whatever other excuse to get their first kiss,
I was hiding in big sweaters, I was hiding in hard silence,
trying to turn this body into an invisible equation.
Until now. Now I want Aman to balance my sides,
to leave his fingerprints all over me. To show all his work.
Concerns
Father Sean asks me if things are going well?
And for a second, I think he knows about the kiss.
That through some divine premonition
or psychic ability . . . he knows.
But then I see him glance at the altar
at the covered chalice full of wine,
the plate holding the soft circles of the body of Christ.
I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I don’t say.
I just shrug. And look anywhere else.
“We all doubt ourselves sometimes,” he tells me.
I look him straight in the eye: “Even you?”
He gives me a small smile that makes him look younger. . . .
You ever look at someone that you’ve known
your whole life and it’s almost like their face
reconfigures itself right in front of your eyes?
Father Sean’s smile makes him look different
and I can imagine the young man he once was.
“Especially me. My whole life I wanted to be a boxer,
an athlete. I thought my body was my way out
of the terrible circumstances I lived in—instead
it was the body of Christ that got me out,
but sometimes I miss my island. My family.
My mother died and I didn’t get there in time to say good-bye.
We all doubt ourselves and our path sometimes.”
I want to say I’m sorry, to bring back the young Father Sean smile
but instead I merely nod.
Some things don’t need words.
What Twin Knows
“Twin, you know Father Sean’s mom died?”
Twin looks up distracted from his phone,