I used to draw unbroken lines on walls with my finger. I saw you walking out of the library, all loose shoulders and easy slouch. Right there, my line broke and I had the ill-fitting desire to inhale your cozy sweatshirt.

You brought a tub of popcorn for us. Blue lights danced on your cheekbone. I followed the grooves in your ear. I wanted to dig my fingers into your hair. Drinking beers and pulling pizzas, we talked about childhood. I worried this was going to be vanilla nonsense. I was needing to open the gates and allow a beast to possess me. I wanted to shave off my hair, get a dozen piercings, get tattooed in all those crevices where rebellion can pool. I pictured my honey skin on your dark body.

I turned to look at you in class. You towered in the back bench, frowning at an equation. I locked eyes with you, made an exaggerated smoldering face. You raised an eyebrow as if accepting the challenge. We made out in the chemistry lab, my back to the door. I heard you restrain a moan and something plummeted in my belly.

You got the keys to your cousin’s room outside the campus. It made my ears hot when I spotted little licks of desire peeking through your shyness. In the still afternoon air, we locked ourselves in. We made nonsense music with your cousin’s guitars and played grainy songs on his turntable. The drums were thumping. We pretended to dance, got awkward, then let go and fell, heavy into a trance. We peeled away at each other. It was easy, slow sorcery. Like being on a swing, flying back and forth over an open cliff. We wanted to go as far as going could take us. We wanted to fly over. Every day. Many times a day. I laughed like a diabolical goddess, feeling power over you, over my body, over the world.

Till I missed my period.

I couldn’t sleep for days after the procedure. I sleepwalked, drawing lines on walls with my vacant eyes. You squeezed my hand after chemistry lab. I wrote bleak poems at first and then stopped. I stopped charging my phone so often. I got great at calculus. I started running more. I had the urge to scuttle like a mouse and scrub floors. I wanted so badly to eat food but I couldn’t bear to.

You asked me what was eating away at me. I said I felt jolted out of vile youthfulness. I felt twice your age. Muscles could stretch inside me, desperate arms of the human race ready to hold me down and make me its vessel. A hundred soldiers could march out of the bloody, fertile earth inside me.

I struggled to explain. It had something to do with how clandestine it all was, how lonely. You wished you were there with me. But where I was, was a hell meant for women.