you’re not too young to teach me about promises

you asked me if it was painful when i pierced my ear. i had forgotten about that impulsive decision i made a decade ago. it hurt when i got it pierced, i said, but the bleeding stopped and the wounds healed. all that’s left is a hole now.

you smiled and replied that there was only a hole because i left my ear studs in. all ear holes close up, you said. cells multiply to restore the body to its original condition.

i wonder if you were still talking about my ear hole or something else altogether. i pictured my ear studs like thorns stuck in flesh, obstructing the hole from patching up.

and maybe that’s why i cannot forget about you. because i refuse to accept that you were long gone. long gone like that winter when we went to see the swans.

i promised you that i would take you back next winter. you promised me too. i’m sorry i wasn’t able to bring you there.

i imagined that you would stroke my hair gingerly and tell me that when a promise is broken, i just have to make a new one. kids who promise to eat their vegetables will stealthily pick out the peas at dinner. parents who promise to buy that lollipop will postpone the purchase.

lovers who vow ’til death do us part will divorce.

despite this, we still continue making promises and believing in people.

so it’s alright when you and i didn’t see the swans that time. i just have to go there alone this year.

and tell you that i made a new promise: i’ll see the swans every year, even when you’re not here.

---

so i published this on my instagram @seaoffools. check me out if u wanna. thanks!

i kissed a feminist once

Artwork by Antonio Lee

“I kissed a feminist once”,
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy bitch anyway”

– Lily Cigale