Lily Valley

Boyhood

Boyhood doesn't have the same ring to it as girlhood.

It doesn't stop when he first sees a porno, that's just the first taste. Not when he runs his hands over real curves, not when his shoulders come in and older women, mature and tall, eye him for too long, knowing he's too young. His years don't separate yet, he's still just sixteen, not when he gets into fights and wins, not when he gets a foot taller and when his smooth face grows hard with a small scruff—he doesn't become a man then.

He observes it, everything changing beneath his neck, with his hand absentmindedly on his chin. He's unimpressed, contemplating it the same as an unconscious content smile. It's a mystery whatever he's thinking, maybe his mind only sparks up when he sees something he needs to touch; words he can't think of to describe vulnerable skin concealed by intrusive clothing. It's a baptism of stripping every time he takes off a girl's clothes. He takes it slow, patient with the neediness.

That's something most guys can't possess—quietness. He knows how to keep his mouth shut, always a gentleman. Not sharing what he loved with other guys, not rewriting words, not messing things up. Who taught him that? A woman, not a girl.

Calling girls "chicks", holding doors open, changing his own oil, shooting down so many things at once. Jean, drop dead gorgeous. Jean, torturing a pretty smile. Jean, a dirty and smooth talker. Jean, three words, five vowels, and three consonants.

He has something. Something he can hold in his entire palm. Something that he can hold up and bandage and soothe. Something he can spin around and undress like a doll and take into his hands. Something he can make squirm and cry and cling onto him. Something he can show how good he is and make everything fall short besides his six-foot stature.

Something he starts to care about more and more every day.

He lost his virginity when he was too young to someone too much older.

What made him a man was being gentle.

Especially with you.

—

You're taking that girl with you everywhere you go, the one that wanted him so badly and the one that he remembers crying on the couch and instantly cooed and held. The one he drove home and came at him a hundred miles an hour, the one he paid no attention to. That girl is different now, now that she got everything she ever wanted.

Your national anthem starts up when he kisses you. Hits you right in the heart, right where intended.

It's better than anything. Especially when those fireflies wisp around you and him on the porch, slow dancing to the raw buzzing, he can't see his shadow, it starts to unfold like a real movie. You just can't believe it sometimes.

He could have any girl he wants, any woman, and yet his arms are around you.

You, obsessed and crazy and worried. Younger and ripe. Not too rotten.

Baby, he comes right back in, standing on his shoes to slow dance, the very first kiss, he feels so much older and wiser. So firm, he'd never fall, you can lean on him all you want. He'd always hold you, he'd always let you in his bed, he'd always take care of you. He's given you what you've never had.

Sweetheart, he loves you, or he will. Or maybe he won't, but have you ever seen him smiling so big? Maybe he'll look over to those mindless stars and want the night to never end, maybe he doesn't ever want to take you home, maybe it's all another reverie falling down the drain, but his arms are around you and they aren't letting go.

Pretty little thing, when he dresses you up in those pretty pink panties and sits you on his lap, your chest breaks open all over again, melting because it's so hot. It burns, it burns, it burns.