our first kiss was anything but romantic. you slammed into me like a freight train, hurried and frantic, as if you’d never done anything like it before. i was charmed by the clumsiness of it, and taken by the passion that came shortly after within the first contact made. it felt hungry. it felt primal. and i tried to pretend that i wasn’t feeling anything but ironically being sober makes you feel everything. i recently realized there have been certain people who have come into my life, that i have never been able to connect with unless at least one of us was fucked up in some capacity. the idea of that makes me feel alien. like i somehow allowed myself to miss the mark of human connection by feeding into a darkness that tends to only loosen you up in the worst ways imaginable. but we were sober that night. clear headed. nothing in between us. i’d never done that before (at least not since high school) and neither had you. but somehow, it was doable. somehow, it was magnetic. somehow, we still liked each other at the end of the night. somehow, i made a conscious decision to sleep in your bed. it wasn’t apathetic or indifferent. it was full bodied and pure. in that moment i knew. i wanted you to take me and make me apart of you. and now it’s months later and i still can’t stop crying when i think too hard about any one piece of it. the end. the middle. your face. your voice. that stupid tie. when you’d bring me to the bathroom with you on FaceTime and i secretly liked it. or the small humming sound you’d make when i said something that touched you. the way you could never seem to not touch me. as if it was psychically impossible for you to not touch me in some form, or whatever way made sense to, whenever you were near me at the time. no playing it cool on Hollywood Blvd, a city made of fakes and you felt so tactile that you could have fooled me into thinking every action was genuine. and you did. zero resistance as you lured me like a pet into a cage. possessed by something i can’t fully explain, i read one of our last text conversations two weeks before you disappeared from my life as if i had made you up entirely. the way you used to talk to me made me physically ill. angels wept over the language barrier, as it does not translate. it doesn’t thread through. it’s criminal, really. you gave away what most people spend their entire lives looking for, as if it was nothing at all.

Camilla Werner-Longo (@xocamillarose) is a writer / poet / actor, based in Los Angeles. When she isn't furiously typing prose on her laptop or in her ever sacred Notes App you can find her swimming in the ocean, petting every stray cat that crosses her path, and always wearing her heart on her sleeve. ✩  camillawernerlongo.com

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