"My Favorite September"

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When I met him, he was anything but charming. From his obvious obsession with my ex-girlfriend to his unapologetic jokes, I couldn't help but give him the cold shoulder. I didn't know it then, but that was the same shoulder he'd rest his head on, limbs twined and everything.

Upon meeting him, I saw a boy who lacked any sense of self. Upon knowing him, I recognized his loneliness. I felt it too. It went beyond proximity. This seclusion we felt, it was existential. And yet, the glow of a gibbous moon waned when we were together. Suddenly, it wasn't judgment I felt toward him. It was love. Of course, I called it friendly love for the sake of sound doctrine, but there was nothing sound about it. I kept my longing silent, afraid that if I openly loved a man, I'd lose the remnant of purity I still had.

With each moonrise, he became my favorite memory, and "I love you" became my favorite contronym. He said he loved me, and I said I loved him. The same words with different implications. I studied his eyes as he studied the stars. I loved him with absolution. He loved me... undecided. 

"I'm not your people, I'm your person." The exclusivity, the affirmation that broke me. For me, he was the spiritual breakthrough I'd prayed for. My first love, the kind you only experience once. He always wanted to sing for me in his car, but he ended up crying instead. Over a girl. 

Her name was Lacy. I never liked her, and not just because she lay between me and my conspired future. She was shallow like the shore. I had the depth of an ocean. She was beautiful, and I hated it; with eyes my color, only more glacial. I must have stared at her portraits as much as he did, only he looked with lust while I looked with envy.

He never told me about her when he held my hand. When he texted me "I love you," he forgot to say "wrong person." And it was the wrong person. I knew she was using him for a title as much as I was for absolution. I accepted that I would never be her. She, his favorite September. But I was just another Sunday evening.

They broke up weeks later. He asked me into his car, the only place he could be himself. I held him as he cried, offering the only assurance I had... that I loved him. He took my hand in his own and said, "I'm going to close my eyes and pretend you're her."

Staring at the car roof, dead-eyed, I felt my hand graze his crotch. Averse to the crease of his pelvis, I tried to pull away, but that only made him hold me tighter. He'd locked his car doors. I said his name, but he wouldn't listen. Finally, I pretended to take a call from my mother, asking me to come home. When I got out of the car, he sped away, and I never saw or heard from him again.

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