Serendipity

Hot sweaty gym/ hot and horny hormones/ heavy bass/ hard time seeing anything after Miss Caver went crazy with those cheap smoke machines. Long lines to the bathroom/ lustful loose lips laughing and listing all the reasons why you're the only one he wants to be with tonight. Lonely hips losing their mind (mine). No one by my side/ the only guy dancing with me is this emerald green stretch satin. I'm wearing the opposite of a smile.

It's all his fault. Marvin Valentine. Five-eleven/ four-star running back/ back to back A/B honor roll ever since he stepped foot in Morris High, Marvin Valentine. I blame him and his chestnut skin. Smooth and shiny and just as pretty as Nat King Cole makes chestnuts sound every time Daddy plays his old Christmas Song record. His brown skin warms like the sweetest holiday/ with red undertones and his head is adorned with silky black brush cut waves that let you know his Mama ain't lie to him about being part Cherokee.

I met Marvin six months back in December and I'm just now realizing that six is the number of the devil himself. High sadity, seventeen, and set in my own ways, he spotted me at the mall in my ivory silk button-up blouse, black leather belt, and vintage Tommy Hilfiger jeans stolen straight out of my mom's closet/ in the corner where she keeps her things that show me when I was in her womb I sucked the sexy out of her. I was shopping with my best friend, Mavis, who was home from Grambling State for winter break. Mavis is two years ahead of me and half the reason why Mama says I'm seventeen going on twenty-seven.

I was super shuffling through the sales rack when I caught those supernova eyes staring at me. The first pair I ever got lost in. In hindsight, they remind me of an eclipse/ something so beautiful everyone sets aside a time in the day to marvel at em/ a phenomenon you shouldn't look into with bare eyes because it can damage your sight. Yeah, Marvin's eyes are so enigmatic they make you forget you got two of em too.

Although I am quite stunning, I think the only reason why he approached me was because he thought I was a college girl like Mavis. He started spitting game to me like his life depended on it. He had the delivery of Gabriel/ a ripening baritone voice that sang like an angel. I felt like our conversation was composed by Cupid himself.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks into the new year that he started to smell like trouble. Once he found out I was a high school senior, had to spend the night at friends' houses to avoid my midnight curfew, had never had a boyfriend, and had never had eyes on me naked/ all his sanging started to sound more like Satan.

It's funny how even when you're stubborn/ you get stuck in your own solitude and stumble across things said to help you get your head out of your own as-- *rear end. Whew. This disco ball and these smoke machines and this DJ telling every guy to grab a girl because he's about to slow things down ain't mixing too well with my flashbacks. I got the white gold half carat diamond earrings Uncle Steven gave me for my sixteenth birthday and Mama's daunting voice whispering in my ear. Even when I'm not listening, the reverential bone in my body listens to her unconsciously. I hear her telling me about how the devil disguises himself as an angel of light, much like Marvin/ Marvin Valentine.

All this time I was thinking of Marvin like he was my savior. He was every girl's dream/ he was a little bit of everything. It made sense for him to always fit in. He was the star student in class and the star player on the field. He could make any guy laugh and make any girl feel/ like she was the prettiest girl in the world.

And I learned the twitch of his toes/ frowns in his forehead/ callus of his hand and fortune of his palm/ life head heart fate and sun line like it was mine. I learned him like we were in love. Bore my body to him like a human sacrifice because I knew that across town at Kennedy Gifted Center, I'd be out of his sight and out of his mind most of the time. And I kept his devotion, thinking only he had made me a woman/ when I was the one who had made him a man. On Valentine's Day, his namesake, I became his first and he became mine/ intertwined for what felt like would be a lifetime.