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.