It was awkward like the first day of school or trying to eat ribs without getting the sauce beneath my fingernails. While she pressed her mass on top of me, I counted the stars or were they airplanes. They flirted, blinking their silver lights.
Then she inserted her finger and I worried her nail polish might flake inside me, creating an infection or complicated aroma of varnish. Then a moan and was that mine.
August is the perfect month to lose one’s virginity because the night air is so dismissive to the sweat sweetly intoxicating fast-moving parts and although the mosquitoes tempted us with suggestions of an orgy, it was just us beneath plastic swing set held captive in her parent’s backyard. At first, I could only focus on the scent of Parliament cigarettes on her skin. It was too dark to create pictures connected by her freckles but I could feel them grind into me. Another finger and the mosquitoes have ignored our request for solitude and what if one bites me on my vagina.
She kisses me with a tongue that feels monstrous, but warm and tastes of what I imagine I must taste like and she doesn’t really want me to touch her and I worry she’s just pretending I’m her boyfriend or our boss who’s suits are always unhemmed and drag against the movie theatre tile. The moon is watching and it’s kind of like a giant nightlight guiding our limbs. Her fist is inside me and this is love, right? Is this love.
Aimee Herman 