‘

'Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’

You mumbled unconvincingly through your breath as I was walking out the door. ‘I have to wake up early tomorrow’. I replied ,half aware, leaving your house. I walked back home drifting, still feeling the condom’s ghost presence stuck in my vagina for time unknown, wishing you’d made me stay. The morning after I run to boots for the day after pill. No sign from you. The hygienic, clinical, and sexless questions, wiped clean our love like a whiteboard. It was my first time, but you didn’t know, or so I thought. My mum’s preaching of purity echoed in my head like a manic rabbit having a bad acid trip, resisting all the shivers in my body that desired you. The liberating conversations I had with friends about sex and love evaporated like the hissing of a cigarette paper. My body wanted to go deep, but my shame imprisoned me. You did all the things, you stopped when I wanted to, you told me I was pretty while we stood naked on my bed, you said we need protection, and I was happy I didn’t have to say it. Why is it then that I still felt abandoned like a deserted unlatched cage. Maybe it was because that morning I didn’t offer you coffee out of fear of making it a ‘thing’. Maybe it was because your friends didn’t like me. Maybe it was because you had a girlfriend. But you never told me. And I never asked. I wish I'd asked.