hi, these are some of my most recent works. pls enjoy <33
I gasp with pain.
She says, “hold on, I’m nearly there.”
All my attention is on what’s below the white paper sheet.
“Alright got it,” she says, and pulls the speculum out.
I sigh with relief and she closes the curtains as I push the thin paper coverings off. I wipe my inner thighs with a tissue before putting my jorts back on.
“We’ll have the STD results by Monday, but do you also want to do a blood test right now for HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis?"
“Yeah that’s fine.”
I exit the room, and stare down the hallway at the growing line of people waiting for a blood test. I take a number.
15
She calls number 5. This is going to take forever.
I sit between an elderly man and a mid aged woman. I shouldn’t be here. The average age in this room has to be around 40. I’m 20. No one knows where I am. Nobody in this room speaks with an accent like mine.
But could my life really be screwed up by one night’s poor decision? Am I going to spend the rest of my life trying to live with HIV? I’m lucky that I noticed something wrong early. Most people would have no idea. It’s a blessing to be here. Is it his fault for giving it to me or is it mine for not being safer? Or is blame pointless now? I’m too young to be here. Has a man ever been good to me? I shouldn’t have any regrets. All the wrongdoings and misgivings brought me here now. Made me notice the things wrong in my body. Gave me the courage to walk through a doctor’s doors alone. You have to be a grown up to be here. And I guess I’ve always had to be a grown up.
I wipe my tears. I sit there for so long my phone starts buzzing, I’m getting a call from somewhere.
“Hello? Is this Aryana?"
"Yeah hi,”
“Hi, are you still currently in the medical building?”
“Yes, I am, I’m just waiting for the blood test, there’s a bit of a line.”
“Ah okay, just make sure to check out with us at the front desk before you leave.”
“Okay sounds good, bye.”
I hang up and realize that my phone is on 5%. At least I’ve been in this country long enough to know how to get home without it.
She calls number 10, and the elderly gentleman next to me starts to rise very slowly. The phlebotomist doesn’t notice and calls number 11. “Excuse me, sorry, this is number 10,” I say and point to the man next to me. She nods and helps him to the room.
The waiting room is empty now. I really hope it’s something I can deal with, like chlamydia.
She calls number 15. I stand up and she leads me to the blood draw room. The phlebotomist asks me for my insurance.
I pull up my email to give her the numbers. 2%. I scream at my phone to hurry and load before it dies. I can’t find the email. All of a sudden I remember I saved a picture of it on my phone. I pull it up and hope she can jot all the numbers down before it dies.
“Ok got it, stick out your arm please.”
After having so many blood draws the past summer, I don’t mind it anymore, I just don’t want to see the needle. She finishes, and the bandaid is the only sign it ever happened.
I stand to thank her and walk down the hall to the reception.
“Are you going to be paying with a card today?”
“Yes.”
I pull out my silver Charles Schwab debit card. This one links to the bank account with the money I saved from my jobs in high school and college. 120 AUD. I’ll file a claim when I’m in Boston.
I thank her and walk outside. The streets are swollen with life. Mine might be reduced to antibiotics buried in my bag.
“Do you like pizza?” he asks. “Yeah, I do, do you?” “yeah” we look at each other across the bench. I’m supposed to see the skyline of Boston, but today is hazy and all I can see is the fading glow of the city lights. I look at him, bored of the awkwardness. He leans in and starts to kiss me. It’s good. Really good. What’s his name again? I keep kissing him, hoping it'll come to me eventually. He takes me to his car. He envelops me with his body and his arms feel like the safest place in the world. Something with him just clicks. Maybe it's the tenderness that he touches me with, maybe it's our in-sync sighs of pleasure, maybe it's the moonlight. I’ve decided I want to lose my virginity to him. After he drops me off, I remember his name is Roberto.
He picks me up in his car again, and the small talk is uncomfortable at best. When he parks on Walden pond, we step out into the crisp night air. He opens his arms for a hug. We embrace before I start running towards a nearby swing set. Wildly swinging, I’m laughing until I can barely breathe. “Put the girl on a swing set and she’s happy as a clam,” he smiles, looking at me. He leads me back to his car, and it’s not long before we’re enveloped in each other. As we kiss, I can’t help but think that the stardust composing our bodies has been entangled before. He puts his fingers where I’ve let no other man go, until I sigh with relief. He tells me he doesn’t remember his first kiss, and I know that I too, want my first to be forgotten by him. Before he drops me off, I ask him to take us somewhere we can’t be found next time.
He texts me, “do you want to go to New Hampshire, my family has a lake house up there?” “yeah that sounds fun,” “okay sounds good, ill pick u up on monday,” I shut my phone off. It’s going to finally happen I guess. I’ll be able to talk about sex with my friends now.
After work ends, I hurriedly change in my room before leaving my phone in the corner. I can see his red car pulling in through my window and I throw my bag over my shoulder before running down the steps to greet him. He gives me a kiss and we’re off to New Hampshire. He has a lake house there, and agreed to take me for a night. The car ride is bubbled with anticipation. New Hampshire’s landscape was vivacious and enthralling. It pulled my nose out of my book to witness its ponds and mountains and forests. The sun was setting over the lake; pinks and oranges dazzled the sky and were reflected infinitely by the water below. After 2 hours of driving, we arrived. He unlocked the door and turned the lights on. We fell into each other’s arms, cuddling. Until the phone call.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the lake house”
“alone?”
“yes…no”
“Who are you with, is it Bella?”
“no no no no, not her”
“Then who?”
“I’ll tell you later”
I went silent and rolled out of his bed. The stardust was just dust. I walked to the kitchen and turned the stove on to make mac and cheese. He followed me shortly after, and wrapped himself around me as I stood in the kitchen. Barely acknowledging his presence, I stirred the pasta. I had already committed in my head. I was screaming for clarity, for someone to tell me whether or not I should go through with it. But there was no one. Why couldn’t I be Bella? We ate together in silence. And then we went out to the dock, to sit by the lake. He wrapped me in his arms, and as I looked up at the most beautiful, bright constellations, tears rolled down my face, betraying my wish that I was alone. He didn’t notice. I decided it was dark enough to skinny dip in the lake. I stripped, and dived in. The coldness of the water snapped me out of something indescribable, and I paddled back to the dock almost immediately. I didn’t realize that cold plunges artificially induce a calming effect on the brain, but when I reached the dock, I had given in. The screams had been silenced. As we walked back into the house, I grew sick with the thought of what was about to happen to me. We showered together, yet I couldn’t seem to scrub the lake off. “Are you sure about this?” “Yeah I am,” I laid my body down, and I lost my virginity. After he finished, he rolled over and scrolled through his phone while I fell asleep. In the morning, I pulled him off of me, made eggs, and finished the mac and cheese over the lake, before he packed up the car for the drive back. The car was silent. I looked around at the Boston traffic. I'd rather be in any of these other cars than this one.
Right
Left
Right
Shit the car almost hit me
They drive on the wrong side of the road here
As I’m running past stop lights
Street lights
Cars whiz past
Australians wake up at 5am evidently
I’m running I’m running
To the harbor
To see the bridge and the opera house
As the sun rises on them
Drops pour from my eyelids
I can’t breath
Bam
I run into the railings
Bury my face in my hands to wipe away the tears but I can’t stop
They keep coming
I look up
The sails are glinting in the light
Wipe my nose
“Hey are you okay?”
A man comes up to me
Asks if I’m okay
What do I say
Can’t I make him stay?
So I pour my life out
Telling every tale
On the harbor
He pulls a tissue out of his bag and holds my head gently while he wipes my nose
He stays for me
A stranger
Lost in kindness
Have you ever touched sea foam
The kind that sits on the beach
In the dark
Where no ocean can touch it
It’s just foam
That sits
Until I come
With my human hands
And indelicate fingers
To marvel at the sight
Of foam
Waiting in the dark
The urge to touch it
Overtakes me
So my attention collapses it into goo
Right onto my fingers
Now it’s slime
Slithering down my fingers
Snow drifts through the air
Beauty follows right behind it
I look at my UGGS dipped with frost
A guttural sob claws at my throat
I’m walking down Pratt street with my backpack
After the boy kicked me out
‘With love and respect’
And he’s really sweet
I stepped down his front porch without looking back at him
I let him slip in me today
His shock mirrored my own
We kiss for hours
He writes me a capacitor practice problem
But now I’m crying
And I’m off to another country now
So when I come back
He will be gone
Probably
I collapse uncertainties into certainties
To make them breathable
How do I keep an uncertainty standing?
Hives crawl over my skin
I want to run into his arms
Kiss him for real
Stop playing pretend
I want his intimacy for real
Rebound
He said he’d text me for 9 months while I’m in Australia
Do I let him prove it?
Or do I run from the uncertainty
And make certain
I won’t see him again
I said I didn’t know if I would still be into casual
He said that’s understandable
I like this boy
It wasn’t even ten steps off his porch before I started crying
There was a smiley face on the fire hydrant I passed
Life goes on
Life goes on
Life goes
I know that my heart was made to be broken.
Some things will never change, no matter how hard I try.
I’ll run foolish errands because I think that’ll build an empire.
Proof pours in from everywhere that proves it wrong.
My heart was born to be smashed into a thousand pieces and thrown into walls
and beaten
and battered
and bruised
and exploded
and shorted
and burned.
All of it was destined to find
me.
My heart must endure that.
Tantalizingly close.
A boy who’s perfect but I don’t like him.
A boy who clicks with me and then disappears.
A boy who makes me laugh while he’s sitting in urgent care, but doesn’t see me like that.
And they all act like they would never hurt me once I let them in.
But who are they to say?
They don’t witness me sobbing into you after I witness their betrayal.
Betrayal.
Over and over again until the heart can’t beat anymore.
Until the heart, flailing and screaming, gives out to the wretched pull of fate.
You will never have anything.
Your heart is not capable of loving someone and so you will never be loved.
Your heart will only know violence.
This is who you are.
You fall in love with ghosts and shadows and relics.
Your heart is flatlining.
Your heart is whimpering and alone on the ground.
It will never beat again.
It will be crushed by footsteps much larger than yours.
It already is.
I stopped telling my parents I loved them when I realized what it meant.
When I was 10 or 11.
There never was a heart to begin with.
So why can I feel every lash, every stomp, every cut, everything.