My First Chill

Chins propped on sinking elbows digging deep into the mattress,  we paid as much attention to the tv as we paid to the convenience store clerk for generic condoms. A song blared from the Sony speakers but it couldn’t supplant the quickened pounding in my ears. The yellow haze of leftover evening sunlight laid upon the dresser like a slick, blurry film, slowly evaporating into the chill that hung above us in the blue twilight. The atmosphere anticipated the evening’s events as much as my body did. His feet wrapped around mine. The warmth in his arches uncurled my cold toes like roses blooming in the spring, still surrounded by ice but coerced to open by sunlight’s assailing kisses: a hasty catcall from a homely stranger on the street that makes you feel uneasy yet wanted all in one interaction. I find myself beneath his weight, him pressing down on my bare chest with the heaviness of his attention on me, my skin, my breathing. I’ve never been tickled as much as when I realized what “muttonchops” were for.  I open my gates to welcome him as though he were a guest promising all the happiness in the world yet with my hands gripped around the cast iron headboard, I am but a visitor of my own invitation, watching from afar as my body rises and falls with my interest. I waited so long for this? He finishes and I lay in the dark damp of the night, surrounded by the chill that has enveloped me, both body and mind.