Just A Boy

Dear First,

You were just a boy on a bench by the fire. Your hood was pulled up over your hair, shadows hanging in your eyes. Your jeans were torn and you jabbed the coals with a blackened stick like you were angry at them, like they had somehow offended you. I could only see your mouth, full lips curled in a scowl, and your hunched shoulders. The keys on your belt jangled sometimes with the force of your movements, clinking together like broken glass.

"He's a punk," Melissa explained to me in a whisper, pointing at you. "He doesn't date high school girls."

You kicked your combat boots in the dirt and sunk deeper into the shadows. I watched you dig into the pocket of your black sweatshirt, watched the firelight glint off the silver metal of the flask you concealed in your big hands. When Melissa left, I got up and sat back down beside you. You didn't move, didn't look at me, didn't say a word.

"The only living punk in the suburbs," I said, watching you out of the corner of my eyes.

Your shoulders shook a little and you put the flask to your lips. "Fucking almost," you said, your teeth clicking against the mouth of the flask. I heard the liquid slosh and echo inside the metal as you pulled it back into your lap. The sharp smell of whiskey snapped through the air for a moment and then the smoke wrapped around us and all I could smell was fire.

You were just a boy on a bench in the dark, but we sat in silence, sharing your flask and letting our knees knock together, and when you kissed me under the trees later that night, your tongue tasted hot and stinging like the whiskey we drank.


You were just a punkling, a lost little boy who didn't know what he wanted except that it had to be loud and fast and your mom had to hate it. And when I was your girlfriend, you wanted me, too. So I snuck out of my house or said I was sleeping at Stephanie's and we took the train into the city to find the loudness. You were my punkling boyfriend and for you, I wore black and plaid and combat boots and thick eyeliner and went to shows. The kind of shows where I didn't remember the names of the bands, wasn't sure I ever knew. The kind of shows where you would push me out of the mosh pit because it was too crazy and there were too many spikes and sweating boys kicking, but I wanted to be in there, flailing and thrashing with you and I'd scream that I hated you, my voice disappearing into the music, and I'd try to hit you, even though I knew you were just protecting me. And you would grab my wrists and stare right into my eyes and look so angry that all I could do was keep yelling or cry.


You were just a boy in my arms in the dark, your breath hot in my ear, your stomach heavy on mine. You kissed me hard everywhere, your lips leaving bruises on my white throat, hips leaving bruises on mine, marks of our violent love. When you were away from me, I stood naked in front of my mirror and touched each purple mark on my body, thinking of you.


You were just a voice, far away and quiet, on the phone from the psych ward.

"I tried to kill my mom," you said. "Or at least, that's what she told the cops. I don't remember anything except when they found me downtown."

You tried to run away, tried to leave it all behind. But I couldn't understand why you didn't ask me to come with you. I waited the twenty-eight days until you were out, counting each one with sleepless nights and little slices on my body where only you could see; twenty-eight thin, red, scabbed lines on my inner thigh that you thought were pen marks at first.

"Why did you do it?" I asked you, sitting on the edge of your bed, watching you chew your dry, chapped lips.

"Do what?" You asked, running your fingers over my brand new scars.

"Leave me behind?"


You were just a boy in a bed by yourself, staring at cracks in the ceiling and taking too many pills to make the mania stop. Everything else stopped, too. We sat in your basement and listened to your mom vacuum the living room floor above us. You kissed me gently, your dry lips barely touching my skin. Your eyes were blank and dark, the shadows coming from inside.

"We're taking him away," your mother said, her hand on your shoulder while you stared straight ahead. "Somewhere he can get better." She leaned across you and rolled the car window up, backing slowly out of the driveway, away from me.


You were just a boy on a bench by the fire, and when you left me behind for good, you didn't even move.