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FALLING BACK

I  was convinced my phobia for men was all in my head. This was after countless speeches had been made to my benefit by the friends in had gathered around me in high school. I was 15, physically mature for an eighteen year old and how my mother prayed all this matched my brain. I had been convinced i needed not to freeze every time a man said my name or to rudely brush off the boys when they came professing their love. Even my therapists agreed, I was to act my age, they said. I was to have a normal teenage life they said.

The problem was i was already past the teenage life. Every man was a means to quench the fires that had been left unattended inside me. Every touch reignited the flames so fast I had time only to convince myself that I wanted more than their idle words, that I wanted to feel flesh consume me, bury me, cover me. And even then, as our bodies would mold together my mind would be plotting the next time, the next place, the next how. It was  a never ending cycle of me trying to catch up with all the burn I needed to cool, the itch I needed to scratch, the moans stuck in my throat that needed to be liberated. 

Every act was void of emotion. I never looked for these boys again and even when they found me I would run still. Because I would hate myself even more for becoming what my father made me. Words that were reserved for the ladies of the night ; I gave myself every day so that the shame was worth it. Every accusatory stare I had received from the women at the market was finally earned. I hated myself so much I wished to match their imaginations only so I could escape my own pain. Every stroke numbed numbed me. 

And then i met B. She was like a symphony of religion and sin. When she touched me, every whisper was silenced. I  was addicted to the way she calmed my aching. I wanted her, but it was not desperate. It was patient and deliberate. Every kiss was left in ellipses, it never ended. Every touch was the beginning of a story we would come back to over and over again but the story never eneded. She did no take me, not even once, she gave me. She gave me love, and hurt, and power, and strength. We would flirt across the room with only our eyes and yet I would be consumed by a need to be. 

Those friends still deliver their speeches, and now that we are older and wiser, they have gathered religion, society and morality for references. Those many years ago I would have swayed again, but I have been loved by a woman, and I have fallen right back for her.

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