Go Home

I like boys on bicycles. They wear button-up shirts tucked into slightly rumpled khakis, crooked glasses, and shoes a size too big for them with untied laces. They are very well groomed; their fingernails are trimmed regularly, and they floss once a day. These boys my father proclaims are “definitely homosexual," but they quietly fall in love with girls in museums and libraries and bus stops. I like these boys because they do not know how to break hearts. They only know how to offer me their sweaters when I’m cold, to get along with my mother, and to remember when my birthday is. I scare these boys. I am too loud, too messy, always say too much, and am far too aware of how much I can’t give to them.
“You should leave," I tell them. “You can’t stay here."

What I mean is that I can’t make them breakfast in the morning because I burn bacon and undercook eggs and like my orange juice extremely pulpy. I get too hot with another person’s body next to mine and can’t abide snoring. I am always running five minutes late. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about things or be touched by anyone and sometimes prefer to dance wildly in deafening, sweaty, dark rooms with people who don’t know my name, than to read a book in the park.

I watch these boys push their glasses up the bridge of their nose with two slender fingers, and nudge their bike onto the sidewalk. They turn to look at me standing in the doorway, and I pull the sleeves of their sweater down to clasp them in my palms.

“Go home," I say. “There is nothing for you here."