Emily Perkovich
- I was wearing khakis and my school polo and we snuck out of chapel and you shoved me into a janitor’s closet and didn’t ask and you put your hand over my mouth to shut me up but if you hadn’t I would have told you that I was too scared to scream in catholic school during mass so that wasn’t really necessary
- You died at 24 and I really hope you figured out before then that harder isn’t always better because you woke up the other girls in bed with us as you hammered me into them despite me not being wet and somehow you still thought I should have to reciprocate
- I still have the chandelier that was over our heads but I repainted it so it doesn’t ever make me think of you and how I told you no because I don’t want to remember you that way since I forgave you a long time ago and we fell in love anyway
- I know I’m too loud sometimes and when your mom walked in and asked what was going on you told her we were playing dominoes and she said that if I got pregnant playing dominoes that I would be a single mom
- The car was so much more fun when you parked it in the garage because we had nowhere else to go but I usually couldn’t finish in the backseat so we moved to the trunk and that always seems a bit strange when I think about it now
- Sometimes on the futon that was missing a support beam change would roll into the concave center and I would think of things like a belly button or how the mattress was swallowing us but you would joke about it being a money maker and I would say not to make jokes because you were bad at them and you would say you don’t make jokes you make change and that joke was even worse and I probably should have taken that as a sign that this wasn’t going to work
- Your roommate came in with your mom and you slammed my head into the windowsill out of surprise so she had to help make sure I wasn’t concussed while I was wrapped in a throw blanket but she still made me rice for dinner and let me watch movies with your little sister who ended up growing up to be on a trashy reality tv show and pulling some girl’s hair while they fought over a drug dealer they both loved
- I loved you more than I ever had at the campground surrounded by wildflowers
- But you ruined that when you held me down to the floor on New Year’s Eve and I write about it too much but sometimes I think that the reason I hate the cold is because of the way the snow drifted in from the open windows and how the next morning you held the door for me and then cleaned the frost off the windshield like everything was fine
- Post airport in the bed of the truck helped me forget how you had left me behind while you were in a foreign country and we watched the planes land and I said they were like the world disappearing and you said they were like shooting stars and I missed that disparity too
- You always liked to take what you wanted and it only became more frequent so when Independence Day didn’t go your way you pushed me into the wall and slammed your whole weight into me and I cried and said it would be the last time but then you left something behind and I probably don’t need to remind you that he’s still left behind
- You held me on my parents’ couch and I let my head fall down to your clavicle and when I realized you’d never make the first move I turned stuck out my tongue and hoped for the best
- The first time in my bed you didn’t flinch when I cried afterwards because too many times before were still tattooed all over me and you knew the way it must have hurt
- I went through a depression where I wasn’t into anything and you were always patient and when we finally spent one night whispering in our ocean blue apartment you breathed into my mouth until I was dizzy and finally starting to feel
- You didn’t want a baby but I did and you acted like it was normal when I would lay in bed afterwards with my legs in the air to help fertilization
- You didn’t want it most times and neither did I and I know that was probably my fault
- Your comforter was threadbare and you had spilled beer on my work clothes so I borrowed a tshirt and slept on your bare chest and when you asked me what I would do if we were together I told you I’d be happy and I meant it and I wrote about it later
- Someone knocked on the window and you told them to leave and we listened to the same album four times while you smoked and when I started to cry we started to kiss and I’ve never seen you smile so much
- We were supposed to meet friends at the bar but as soon as I climbed onto your lap someone spotted my car and climbed in with us and we kicked them out but by the time I got my pants off there was a tow truck parked in front of us getting ready to chain up my car and you asked if I wanted to stop and I told you it was really too late for that so we both finished and you talked the tow truck driver into leaving and then we went to the bar and held hands instead of drank
- You did too much blow and you couldn’t get it up and when you acted like that was my fault things started to fall apart
- I held your cigarette and you spilled your drink in my lap and bled on my shirt and I was thinking of how you had ruined way too many of my clothes for this but when I told you you weren’t very smart you said you weren’t stupid either and for some reason the pills made me think that was funny enough to not push you away
- The show was long and we were too close most of the time so I had to bite you to control myself and I didn’t think that you noticed but when we got home I realized that you must have because I had always been the person to initiate the first kiss but you ran your fingers up the back of my neck and I was breathless by the time we left the car
- Your boxspring had a hole in it and your cat climbed out of it and pissed on my pants and when I mentioned it in public later everyone wanted to know how your cat had peed on me but I couldn’t figure out a good way to explain it so you changed the subject
- You picked me up from the airport and it was always too cold so by the time we climbed into bed I just wanted to be skin on skin
- A FaceTime call where we locked eyes and took pills at the same time after I dared you to take more than me and then let you sweet talk me for several hours until I was falling asleep
- You knelt between my legs at the movie theater
- Another post airport and the only unique one in that it was a singular occurrence and you finished way too quickly (in what was possibly less than a minute) so that I had more fun flirting on the couch before and telling each other stories in bed afterward but wanted to leave the moment you tried to rectify the experience by offering me food as a reparation at which point I asked you to just take me home where you did make up for the extreme quickie by driving as fast as I like to with complete and total recklessness
- Hotel room phone conversations where your voice left my sheets wet and my neighbors less than thrilled and me all giggles and light headed
- You held me on my couch and I wanted to say no because something seemed inappropriate about laying under this same chandelier now that it was pink but most of me said yes so now it’s seen a few things
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Emily Perkovich is from the Chicago-land area. When she is not traveling for work, she spends her free time in the city with her family. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She is previously published with Wide Eyes Publishing, Witches N Pink, Persephone’s Daughters, and Awakened Voices amongst others. Her chapbook “Expulsion” was released in April 2020 with Witches N Pink.