The Sanctuary Beyond the Undergrowth

When I turned 15 years old I met this boy with these tumbling brown waves and a body that you could slip between the cracks in a door. He often wandered the park in these tall boots, lost and messy. I watched with my uniform skirt tugged down to my wobbly knees and books pressed to my chest [a chest that made the other girls at Richard Day giggle behind their manicured hands], wondering if one day I could gather myself to walk over and sweep all his pain into the trash.

I didn’t know this boy, but I often found my fingers writing about him in the middle of long school nights. I was struck with this odd, girly fascination, much like my friends would gape over the glossy pictures of chiseled chests and gleaming teeth in their magazines. His feminine physique spiked curiosity within me; those skinny fingers and those skinny legs and that translucent complexion and those pale eyes—

I barely knew this boy, but he was on my mind often.