Everything She Despises
Anonymous

"Thermal"
Lindy Heister
The first time my friend shared her girl on girl daydreams
​
with me my entire body went numb.
​
I let myself pretend just for a moment, that I could be openly gay
​
without being OPEN about BEING gay.
​
I let her stories consume me, let them take control of my pulse and the
edges of my grin and every single nerve in me.
​
She asked me if I could ever picture myself loving another female.
​
I laughed, rolled my eyes – whose gaze had traveled from her thighs,
passed her caved stomach, to the creases of her perfect smile – and
shook my head.
​
“That’s gay,” I’d say with such roughness that it made my entire body
sore.
​
She’d bite her lip and take in the staleness of my words.
​
Then, after a moment of silence, she’d ask me to tell her about the boy I
imagined kissing.
​
My thoughts race to my cover story,
​
the one I made up every few weeks about a boy I found noticeably cute
​
but
would never date because his personality was too dry, or I didn’t
like the way he ate pasta, or the fact that he called croutons “little
breads"
I’d tell her about him, convincing her that I could never love anything as
feminine as her.
Lie upon lie I buried myself in everything but her skin.
She’d always tell me how much she hated liars.
I wonder how she would react if she knew her best friend was the bane
of her existence.
I could never resist a pretty smile.
I could never resist her smile.
And sometimes, when she smiled at me, I almost forgot how to think
straight.