It was the day after my birthday; you took me out for lunch. We talked under glowing little lights in a café. I ate my too-spicy sandwich and tried to act normal, looking you up and down, gaze snagging on your bottom lip. I had this tantalizing secret bubbling up inside of me, and you didn't even <em>know</em> yet. Later, later.

When I came back to your house, and we were sprawled on your bed talking, I paused. Said, slowly, "I need a shower."

You grabbed my hand, but it took you a minute, to figure out what I was getting at; I don't think you really understood until I was kissing you, pushing you back against the wall, not holding back in the slightest. And I was glad, in that moment, that the mirror was fogged up so I couldn't see myself, naked and kneeling, looking up at you with big blue eyes. I didn't want to see myself, only you. You, asking breathlessly, "Are you sure?" You, shaking in my arms, crying out and pulling me in closer. I smiled, steam swirling between my lips and around my teeth.

Afterward, you asked me if I felt dirty.

You said you had, after your first time.&nbsp;

I blinked and shook&nbsp;my head.

My friends wanted to know the details, or at least they thought they did. When I told them, they looked away, and then turned back shyly&nbsp;and asked the strangest questions.&nbsp;

(Are you two in love?

What noises do you make?

Surely it doesn't really count.

Do you have hickeys places we can't see?

I'm&nbsp;going to stay a virgin until I'm twenty-one.

But you're so youn-)

I walked home. It was cold and you hadn't given me your jacket like you did all those months ago. I frowned, hugging my arms around myself tighter. Once I had passed the dull cream carpets of the entry-hall, I let myself into my apartment and sat down on the floor. I picked up the jar that I kept under my bed and took out all the folded pieces of paper. 'Reasons I Love You,' they were labelled. I spread them all out on the floor and read them, one by one. It was strange, because none of them said what I expected them to say. I bit my lip. No matter.

"Are you okay?" A voice calls from the hallway.

"Yes."

"You're awful quiet in there." A pause, then footsteps shuffling away.

Enough, I wanted to say. Goddamnit, enough. Don't they understand that I might want to be quiet, sometimes? Might not want to answer their questions because to them, my answers are unsatisfactory? They don't understand. Hell, you don't understand! This morning, I frowned at you over the breakfast table because you were pulling a marionette man's legs up and whispering that that's how I looked last night. I'd been utterly lost as to what to say.

Everyone seems to think I should feel dirty.

Some things, some things make me feel dirty. Nervous sweat, or the word 'jailbait'.

But you, peppering kisses over my body, flipping my hand over so you could reach the inside of my wrist, holding a whole universe in your hazel eyes - that isn't one of them.

I don't feel dirty.

I feel free.

Eyes everywhere;

Shit.

My walls feel weak

On the inside.

I -

I'm nowhere near

Enough.

The room was colours. A thousand different colours, spinning and weaving through each other like trails of light. "They're dancing," I whispered, my words barely more than an exhale.

I gazed out at the club floor. At another time, I might have noticed the grating music, the gyrating mass of bodies and above all, the smell of sweat. Now though, everything was blurred. Blurred, but not faded - everything pulsated with vibrance, the colours humming behind my eyes. The grungy room, previously bubbling up with human desperation, was gone. It'd been replaced with something beautiful, and sweet Jesus, I felt free.

A stranger's hand alighted on my shoulder. It felt rough and warm through my thin shirt, the sensation slamming me back into my body. I swayed on my feet. My nerves were singing, begging for more of this harshly intense, swimming feeling. I slammed my last shot of whiskey - burning, burning, all the way down my throat. I laughed. Said, "Your eyes are all of the colours." It was true - his irises were a delicious mix of blue and grey, flecked through with glinting hazel. I scarcely even noticed what he looked like. All that mattered was that his eyes were sparking with everything I wanted - more, more, more - and  I said, "I wish I could climb inside them."

I followed him to a back room, my steps faltering for a moment, and I knew there was something I was forgetting. Best of all, I knew I wanted to forget. I grinned, and let the purple curtain flutter closed behind me.

The only light inside the tiny room was from candles, and my breath caught as I saw the flames dancing in his eyes. "So bright," I murmured.

He held his hands out with the palms facing upwards, a silent invitation. When I put my hands in his, he spun me around until my knees buckled and I fell backwards onto the narrow couch, its leather red like cherries.

I sat back and he kissed me like he wanted to eat me alive, until my breath was short and everything had melted into hot and wet, tongues and lips and more, please more. He roughly stripped me, the buttons snapping on my shirt until I was laid out naked in front of him. For a moment, I was disappointed - I couldn't see the colours in his eyes anymore. 

He leaned down, lips brushing against my neck, and began to paint red into my skin. Dark bruises were everywhere, each one a memory, an instant comprised only of soft lips and the scrape of teeth. And I was so very pleased, to see my very flesh marked as a painting. There was something beautiful about it, rich like sin and light like dreams. 

When the world was swallowed away in a sea of shudders, there was nothing more I could possibly want. My eyes were squeezed shut and even then, I could see colours buzzing like TV static before me. The word, "Beautiful," slipped from my lips. 

With a low laugh, the man with the colours in his eyes was gone. 

In the morning, I felt like a train wreck. Like my body was made of screeching pieces of metal, destruction shining too bright in the sun, smoke rising from the top. Glorious in my catastrophe.

Shaking and barely able to stand, I put my crumpled clothes back on as best I could. I walked across the bar, ignoring the eyes on me. In the light, I could see clearly the hickeys which littered my chest where my shirt hung open.

I threw up in the parking lot, wrenching my insides out, my elbows stinging where I'd propped them on the concrete. I dropped my car keys and fumbled for them on the ground. Passers by laughed at me. The sky seemed painfully blue, throbbing in its clarity. I was filthy, miserable, but I didn't feel dirty. Not inside. Inside, I felt like something had been shaken loose. Freedom, perhaps. Or colours.