Amanda Adrienne Smith
PARALLEL WINTERS
I want to write about the boy I lost my virginity to.
The bus ride to Edina or some such rich Minnesotan
suburb. Or maybe it was a car. He had a truck. Did he
no longer have his truck. I can’t remember. I took
naked photos of myself on film he never saw. His dad
a lawyer, I think. His mom Native, I know. The house
locked and big. I cried in the photos. I was always crying
in photos. Me in a snowbank out back. 2 minutes on
the ground. I can’t remember how I got undressed in
that cold weather. I do remember he laid out the jacket
to keep me warm. An act of kindness. It hadn’t been
the first time. Or maybe the time in the brush. The side
of a hill by the river. His robot suitcase to store all his
traveling poems. The first time I was suicidal, typing out
sadness on AIM. His girlfriend pretending to be him.
Then not pretending to be him. She must have suspected.
I asked him if he was molested. I was, I said. I was.
Were you?
He came over, brought pills from the gas station. He
said they would feel like glass. Help me cry less. His
eyes sweet, maybe a little scared. Winter staring back at
me from inside his truck. I can’t remember how many
I took. Our birthdays the same. His hair so black. So glad
to be done with it. The faint blood on my bed. The way
he held me puffy-eyed and no longer crying. No. Not
that. I held myself. I must have been so difficult then.