to my first boyfriend
your mouth was
the town i grew up in,
my adolescent experiences
wedged between your teeth.
fourteen and your eyes
were the first boy’s i looked at
for longer
than i should.
fifteen and your insults:
“she’s got a fuckable body,
but an ugly face”
were the first to taste like honey.
sixteen and your secrets
were the first that felt like glass;
delicate and heavy
in my hands.
seventeen and your mouth
swallowed me like a python.
one gulp and i was
gone.
boyfriend,
i want to tell you
about him and those dark poems that I wrote
but for some reason
i worry that you wouldn’t take it seriously.
maybe it’s because
you’re a boy and
i’m a girl.
maybe it’s because
sometimes even i don’t take it seriously
because I remember his friend who told me,
“shut up, let him do what he wants,” because
he’s a boy and
i’m a girl
Melanie wrote her first book Remember Me when she was fourteen, which was published by Bold Strokes Books when she was sixteen. In 2014, Remember Me won gold Moonbeam Children’s Book Award in for Best Book by a Young Author. She currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, but plans to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota to attend college.