yeah, i've got a fucking valentine.
her:
in cars we were aways either driving or fucking. we never just sat and talked like i'm told some people do. i'd wear that skirt you said you liked and you'd keep one hand on the wheel, the other on my thigh. i liked to pretend you could drive me like that car but you were never quite distant enough to really control me.
then there was that night when the streetlights blurred. i was so young then. the cracks in my heart hadn't quite yet split. you could have saved me or destroyed me then. but i suppose that is the nature of first loves. i didn't know it then but i would have died for you and almost did. when you kissed the bottle then kissed my lips. we spent hours in the backseat. long enough for our bodies to cling to the upholstery but not long enough to save me. you got back behind the wheel. i remember the feverish gleam in your tired eyes and the way the streetlights hadn't stopped swimming.
then the car made love to a telephone pole and i was kissing the asphalt.
him:
your wrists were smaller than mine. i kissed the little white scars on them for a reason. i often thought about you being mine forever but never told you then. something about the distant look in your ebony eyes stopped me. and the way they looked into mine as if you knew something that i never would. i still suspect that i was just another boy to you. i fit the mold like all the others. i didn't find out until much later that i was your first, and it surprised me. because of the way your thin limbs wrapped around me with more heat and urgency than any of the other girls i've tasted. there were many but none understood my sickness like you did. it seemed like we spent every night watching street signs and our bodies but never stopping to compare the two. we knew we'd uncover too many contradictions if we did.
but i am getting far, far off track. it all comes down to the end. that night the streetlights looked like dandelions and you kissed the windshield harder than you ever kissed me. it was my fault, i suppose. but i believe seeing your tiny body in the flashing blue lights was punishment enough.
they almost didn't let me into the little white room. i told them i was your older brother and should have felt a pang of guilt when they believed me. it was difficult to recognize you lost in all those tubes and wires. i couldn't stop myself from placing my arms around your thin frame and letting your black hair catch my tears. i don't remember screaming but i remember them dragging me away and asking me not to return.
these days all i do in my car is drive and sleep. i can still smell you sometimes when i lay facedown in the backseat. i don't imagine that your father will ever forgive me and i've finally realized that you were nothing but a child all along. or i tell myself that sometimes. but something about the way your dark eyes looked through mine had me convinced that you were years beyond me.
now my wrists have marks like yours and i think of you when i look at them. it's the only time i almost smile.