I can't compete. Not when they are 19, and their eyes are still shining and wet from staring at you. They haven't learned. They don't know that sex doesn't mean love. It means availability moistened with alcohol. You come so strong at first. It's like when I suck from the straw, and the vacuum of my lips only grabs at the vodka at the bottom. It bypasses the carbonation from the gun. You hit below the belt, warming my stomach just the same way.
We don't communicate in conversation. It's more of a fight to be heard. A fight to be right. A fight to be the girl next to you. A fight so strong that sometimes, I want to reach over the bar top and grab that barmaid by the throat and ask her to please stop staring into my eyes like it's going to mean something. Maybe if I had We Never Fucked tattooed in old English across my collarbones in a rose-adorned chest piece, she would get it. Why would the ownership of a washed-up, corn-fed, Southern boy be this trophy? I want to ask her. But I won't.
I asked you once on Valentine's Day, for a gift. You threw someone else's stale candy hearts into my lap and said, "here." I wanted to cry. Instead I re-applied my lipgloss. If you got close enough, you could smell the plastic shine of cherries. Instead I made you leave me under a streetlight that wasn't even mine, just so I could get out. Passive aggressiveness belongs in the tenth grade with unwelcome cops and feels. But that's what works when you hit that far below the belt.