Birds and Bees
Image Courtesy: Nora Gerlicyz, Pratt Institute
Around 2006.
I sprint off my back porch. The boy who lives behind my house is outside. He throws a fistful of dirt in my face.
June 2018. A letter written in purple ink, from a friend away at summer camp..
I know I’ve said this before, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but he really feels like home. Like comfort in a person. Like I come here every summer, and I don’t think about the guys back in Virginia because it’s different with him.
Age 17.
He loves me best when I cover up.
From a novel I found in a used bookstore:
“Romance and passion filled my imagination. I was far too young for the novels I read, and I understood little of them except that love makes you suffer. Why would anyone want to be destroyed so prematurely?”
In the middle of Chapel Dr. We were still wearing party hats.
We had just ditched the whole party. I kissed him with my arms around his neck. Buzzing with liquid courage, buzzing with adrenaline, we began running down the hill. In fact, we ran all the way home.
The contents of a box under my desk:
- My high school yearbook
- A build-a-bear that smells like cotton candy
- Framed photos of us on a boat
- A cheap yellow starfish, purchased at the Chesapeake Bay
After getting frozen yogurt.
We are 13. We just snuck hard ciders from the fridge. We can hear her mom having sex in the basement. It’s not her dad.
4 in the morning; I’ve gotten too high.
Whatever’s in my system makes me want to touch him more. He tells me something has gotten into me. I slept for 12 hours the next day. I’ve never felt quite the same.
An excerpt from a novel about a man on death row:
“Real love is like fire.”
Age 13.
He loves me best when I’m bold.
Small group (when I still went to church).
She tells us how the divorce affected her. She tells us that the jokes really aren’t funny. She tells us that she walked in on her mother wearing her wedding dress, sobbing on the closet floor.
A journal entry from July 2023:
...and you have to remind yourself that if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be okay and you’ll still be you and you’ll still be happy.
My parents.
I don’t know much, but what I do know is that my dad holds my mom’s hand when we walk anywhere from the car, and my mom buys my dad fresh-baked brownies from the farmer’s market on Saturdays. She goes to the farmer’s market alone, which is also part of the point.
Football game, age 14.
We left the game in the back of my best friend’s minivan. Although they haven’t spoken once in person, they like each other, and this is going to last. Her phone is buzzing with texts of him calling her pretty. If this could happen to me, my entire life would be complete.
Sitting in the ER waiting room.
A woman gives her birth year to the front desk: 1945. She makes the nurse promise her they won’t start the scan without her husband. He holds her hand as they walk into the room.
In cold sweats after a nightmare.
I didn’t know that I sleepwalked before, but now I think I might. Standing in my apartment living room, I snap myself out of the haze and climb back into bed. I reach out for the other side of the comforter. It’s cold.
Age 15.
He loves me best when I’m quiet.
Senior year of high school.
I lay on the floor in the dark, a slew of generic breakup songs playing on repeat. My eyes are puffy; nobody is home. I’ve had a stomachache for 4 days. I don’t know how to explain to a single other person what this feels like.
Cooties.
I pretended like I didn’t want to play basketball with the boys (I did). I pretended like I didn’t think making a shot would impress them (it probably didn’t). When my mom called me in for dinner that night, I pretended like I wasn’t eating as fast as I could, hoping to run into the boys in the cul-de-sac once more.
Written on a birthday card I forgot to send:
I can tell that you are outgrowing life right now, and it’s starting to frustrate you. I hope you can tell that I care about you enough to notice.
After dinner and a kiss goodnight.
He agreed to put on my favorite movie, my head on his chest for the entirety of it. The January air is frigid, but my cheeks will surely be warm for hours.
Seventh grade, on the way to school.
N grabs the iPod off the dash and turns off “A.M.” by One Direction. She tells me it’s gross. She tells me that loveis gross. She tells me she hates One Direction.
Home from college, 2021.
N tells me she’s able to make long-distance work. She tells me he takes the night train to Manhattan to see her every few weeks. She tells me it’s real.
Laughing on a trampoline at age 10 while sipping Arizona Tea.
A: I have a boyfriend.
S: You do?
A: I do.
S: How did you meet him?
A: Instagram
S: Do your parents know?
A: No, of course not!
S: What do you guys talk about?
A: Everything. He said “Rhythm of Love” by the Plain White T’s makes him think of me.
S: Do you love him?
A: Of course.
October 14th, writing in my journal, while sipping chamomile tea.
I wish I stuck around long enough to find out which cabinet was for the bowls, and which was for the plates. I wish we had more time.
A list in my phone notes titled “things that have made me emotional today”:
The cartoon drawings on the Extra gum packet.
After laughing too loud with my friends.
“I just think you act too much like a freshman.”
After a graduation party—the last time we ever saw each other.
Despite months of silence, you offered to drive me home. You didn’t spend the night. I locked the door behind you.
Age 11, watching a sitcom with my dad.
- Dad?
- Hm?
- What is sex?
- …Ask your mother.
5 a.m. in the Toyota Prius.
I’m not sure what hurt worse; the pounding red wine hangover, or the hand-shaped bruise.
Spring 2023. An excerpt from a novel I read in Portland:
“I understood, then, the immense honor it is to hurt like she does. To have loved someone so much that the taste of maple syrup can make you cry and laugh at the same time.”
On the green in front of the county courthouse.
Him: Do you like Guns N Roses?
Me: I love Guns N Roses (I have never heard a Guns N Roses song in my entire life).
Talking to the coolest person I’d ever met: my childhood babysitter (she wore a lot of rings).
S: What is this?
J: Don’t look at that. It’s a calendar.
S: Who is that?
J: He’s from the movie Twilight.
S: Why are there hearts drawn on it?
J: Stop. Don’t look at it.
A journal entry from 2018 (I haven’t felt like me in months):
I’m telling myself this isn’t the end. I hope we meet in the future. Or maybe in another life.
In the street plaza.
The couple asked me to take a photo of them in front of the comically large Christmas tree outside the Italian Ice shop I worked at. I happily agreed. Three photos in, he turned and got on one knee.
The first “first date” I’d ever been on.
He wore a baseball T-shirt. I wore white denim shorts. As I swung around a lamp post outside a movie theater under the dusk of summer, I wished the moment would last forever.
During my shift at the Mexican restaurant. He hasn’t called me back.
I realized I wasn’t going to see him tonight. I realized I no longer cared. I realized I couldn’t force myself into his life, sticking out like a loose splinter on a banister. I realized there was much more to me than what I am to him.
In health class.
I don’t know who said they could show us drawings like that in school, but I ran all the way home from the bus stop that day, still wanting to cover my eyes.
First grade.
The timed test took me 2 minutes and 12 seconds. It took him 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Maybe love is him letting me beat him in solving math problems.
Junior year of college.
The crossword took me 24 minutes and 18 seconds to complete. It took him 37 minutes and 4 seconds. Maybe love is him letting me beat him in completing the crossword.
Age 20
He loves me best when I’m entirely me.
Strike Out,
Writer: Sarah Bourloukas
Editor: Lindsey Limbach
Tallahassee