it started impersonal, making me wonder if we were two more experienced bodies, picking up where we left off, but knowing each other less; you remembered how much i love it when you kiss my neck, but then i remembered that so do all girls; perhaps my coaching you to kiss my neck more last year was just a lesson that you paid forward to other women who came in and out of your bedroom, and by the time it circled back to me, it wasn’t because i like neck kisses, but because everyone does.
it wasn’t until we fell asleep that i noticed things could be okay again. i curled up on my side and started to doze off, you scooped me in close to you and played with my hair. tucked a strand of it behind my ear. “you look cute like this.” it wasn’t what i’d imagined, but i thought, if between the start of the night and the start of the morning, you grew to feel as familiar as you did last year, perhaps it was a familiarity that could continue to grow between the more grown-up versions of ourselves.
your ethnic friend 