Eat the Poor

XXXI

"It's easy to talk to you," he told me as we sat in the grass, lush fields of green sprawled out around us. He leaned back against my chest. Already his pale skin showed hints of sunburn. "If only everyone was like you."

The grass surrounding us grew in tall, unsheared stalks, untouched by human hands. Silent, still. A green oasis all of our own.

I traced the constellation of freckles just above his collarbone. "You could pretend you're talking to me." The side of his face shone in the sun, sticky with summer heat, his curls parted in such a way that I could see his scar. "Pretend there is no one else in the room, only us."

"When I... try to talk... my mouth gets dry and I feel like I'm going to be sick and then I just want to faint so it will go away." He gazed up at me, amber eyes big and soft. "I'm hopeless. Don't you think?"

"You know what I think, darling."

"Tell me again," he giggled.

"I think you're passionate. Inquisitive." I kissed his nose. "Kind." His forehead. "Beautiful."

"I think I'd like to kiss you," he whispered, and he did, we did, we kissed until my lips were numb and felt wrong without the pressure of his. And in each heated breath, I was cleansed. I was healed.

We lay in the grass and watched the sky with squinted eyes and fingers laced together. All blue, no clouds, the sun an orange blaze centered in emptiness. It was beautiful, yet I thought, not even the sun compares to you. My sun. My salvation.

Despite the heat, he lay close to me, our sides pressed together. He traced lines on my palm with one fingertip. "I suppose you've kissed others." His words sounded neither like a statement nor a question, just a thought that had come to his mind.

Before I could stop it, I was taken back to London, the stench of the city all around me, feeling a wet mouth meet mine for the first time. I remembered the taste, the suffocation, prickly beard on my jaw as I palmed his trousers. The rot bubbled up inside me.

"I've been kissed," I answered.

Philip seemed to ponder this, his cheek on my shoulder now, his fingers running loosely through the blades of grass. Bits of broken grass stuck in his curls. "Who kissed you?"

If only he knew. He would think me dirty, diseased perhaps, no better than the old woman behind the tavern. No better than the courtesans his father forced upon him.

"It doesn't matter," I told him. The truth. "No one before you matters."

He gave me a half-crooked smile, and sat up very close to me. "Really?"

"I've had to do things I didn't always want to," I explained carefully. "They weren't real. They were..." I cursed myself. He wouldn't understand. He couldn't. "What I have with you is real, Philip."

He looked down. Stray curls curtained his eyes, making them unreadable. I waited for his disappointment. This is why I lied to men. This is why I told them that they were the first. They were always so excited. I should have lied.

"Have you..." He trailed off, still avoiding my gaze.

I let out a breath. His silence, which I mistook for contemplation, had actually been shyness. "What?" When he didn't answer, I gestured about the empty field. "You can say it. No one will hear you."

"Lain with someone?"

I thought about how to answer. No, I had never lain in bed with someone. All I knew was that alley, eyes fixed on the wall, mind blackened. The things I did with men had always been for money, nothing more. I learned to enjoy their attention, but only because it meant more coins in my pocket. The only pleasure I took was walking away with their wages and leaving them to stew in their guilt.