"A Letter from the First Girl to Break your Son’s Heart" by Amy Marques

I know you watched us. How could you not? Your damn porch light was like a spotlight that caught my skin in the strapless bikini I thought made me look older, the too short skirt that kept me standing because I didn’t know how to sit in it without losing what little decorum I had left. He was a gentleman, though. Leaning in, but never quite reaching far enough. Always a little too formal, a little too earnest, in his closed toed shoes and shirt tucked carefully into tightly cinched pants. He couldn’t take his eyes off me, but I had a hard time looking back at him. 

I should have known then. I did know then. I wondered if you, too, had known what it’s like to try someone on for size, to measure their kindness and feel the weight of their care even as your stomach remains unbutterflied and your heart refuses to pick up the pace. I wanted more, of course: fireworks and rollercoasters and deep, deep dives. More than the measured steadiness he promised. 

You might have told me what more awaited in that silent darkness. You might have told me that the butterflies I yearned for are really moths that eat through the fabric of your soul and pull you towards the flames that burn you. You might have told me. But I wouldn’t have listened. Not then.

Amy Marques has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She has been nominated for multiple awards and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duets anthology and of the erasure poetry book PARTS published with Full Mood Publishing. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.