love and lust and everything in between

he reads me a story
about a man and a woman
whose talking leads to drinking
and drinking leads to dancing
and dancing leads to undressing in her bedroom
and i pretend my mind isn’t dancing around in deja vu
of all the lessons in love and lust i have learned
from the boy beside me and all those i once knew

it always frustrated me
that boys were not something i could study up on
that there was no textbook on what to say and how to say it
i watched every bardot movie i could pirate
read the poems of neruda and the novels of allende
as i observed and i researched, always from afar
i doubted i was the kind of girl
who ever would learn first-hand
until i awoke one day at fifteen and found myself
smackdab in the middle of the scene
of love and lust and everything in between

i loved the poor men and the rich men
from the rednecks of the new hampshire appalachians
the kind who cannot fathom a friday night
free of homegrown weed and baseball tees
to the socialites of polanco
the kind who lack self-control
and cannot fathom watching a fifa match
from anywhere but the lower bowl

i loved the gentle men and the rough men
from the kind whose chiseled jaws
are the only sharp thing about them
carrying themselves so softly,
even the bunnies will beg to burrow in their beds
to the kind whose tongues
are the only soft part of their anatomy
sometimes taking out their strength on footballs
other times punching holes straight through drywall

and, like all naive women have,
i have made the mistake
of poisoning my love and smothering my lust
through over-calculated, pre-scripted texts
and self-conscious, over-performative sex
and now that my naivety has been replaced with liberty
i refuse to ever go back to that captivity

i tell him i don’t do the boyfriend thing
all the pageantry and the menagerie
and god forbid some guy have to deal
with all my father’s forgotten debris

i tell him freedom is a delicate thing
and my freedom is the freshest, newborn babe
just learning how to swim
i must keep her sea empty and her currents soft
and to be someone’s girl, is to never swim free again

but loving and lusting have never tried to cage me
in fact, i don’t think i’ve ever been more untethered
than when i was giggling in the arms
of a california cowboy
and all that giggling lead to dancing
and all that dancing
lead to undressing in my bedroom
and it’s not quite lust or love
or any and all of the above

but something that finds me
in all of my freest dreams
and the future nostalgia of my teens
tasting of peruvian coca leaves
and shots of pure dopamine
this loving and lusting and everything in between.

Copyright © 2025 Anita Marie Julca