A love letter to men and youth
Remembering the men of my life and the impacts they’ve had
Hey Men!
I’d like to tumble with you—seek out the rising sun of your pulsating skin.
Rope me in with your rusty exhale and everything else.
It makes you wonder,
would you fall to my knees like your gaze says you would?
Then, how come I’m always running to you?
I crumble to the undying road under your gazing horizon.
You’ve taken me everywhere and everywhere else,
to the lonely respite, my head twirls when I imagine myself beside you.
After the bodily explosion and rhythmic exhales,
I’d like to slip inside of you for the first time,
all at once.
Hold your body weight and forget my nights.
Back then, I barely knew.
I drifted in high fives and 3 p.m. jokes.
I searched for an affection you could never give me.
Still, I felt the pulse when the girls melted and went weak-kneed.
I wondered what that was all about.
Then, I spent too much time on the internet and annihilated my mind.
Sex was painted as a sensory blackout.
Totally maxxed out on waxed girls and chest implants.
Chunky moustaches and overplayed narratives,
empty pizza boxes
Pools and fragmented exploitation industries,
I wondered what those girls thought of
when
they were wide open to the point of discomfort and fabricated screams.
Man-handled grips, hungry hands and pink nipples,
toes curling,
joints moving in and out of pleasure points,
stirring sighs and musical groans of lustful heaven,
moans from plastic hedonism.
My eyes widened as organs collided aggressively.
Well, this is love, isn’t it?
And maybe I’d never have it 'cause I didn’t know you could wax yourself down there.
Sell your body for dollars,
not always of your own right.
I was clueless back then.
All I felt was the pulse when he kissed her with the girth of a leading man.
When his hands slid inside her–my body swivelled with rippling envy—I wanted more, more.
I was clueless back then, but I knew,
under this worldly scope, that I’d always perform,
even in bed, even when you didn’t know me,
you reeled me in with your decency and everything else.
We shared so many songs just to become friends in the undying light of our town.
Until high school ended,
I walked on the dream of never dredging around these halls again.
When my new world began, I was boiled by the turmoil of an insecure girl’s past.
How could I ever forget myself?
How disappointment and agony destroyed my 17-year-old body?
How could I forget the himbo hunks of 8 a.m. lectures next to the Forum?
How, when in faraway towns, you split my heart open to the sound of The Beatles?
Or how, for two years, I thought I loved you?
Sweetness remained when I met the guys who talked with their hands and whom I acquainted with Johnny Cash on blue floors.
When they lay there next to me, I saw their young-adult torsos under their green shirts and their nasal voices.
The guys of wrong time, chunky arms, short-lived rap careers and supportive voices of fading faraway.
Almost acid dreams and childhood ecstasy of memories we were not sure of.
All the guys with their colliding bodies on Halloween nights.
I remember how your eyes shone in your young-adult whimsy when I first saw you.
My mind drifted to the possibilities and everywhere else.
I was struck by your demeanour in a smiley disarray, your shrill voice of fun and total trouble.
Your naive eyes and worldly body.
On your smoke breaks, I wondered how the wind blew you by when your lungs shattered.
Your laugh splattered with joy; you always called with the height of desire and a wave-chilling calm.
When we said goodbye,
I sensed you held back.
But,
I knew,
you might miss me too.
Shine on in your endearingly disorganized ways; never lose the uncaring spirit, but don’t let it eat you whole.
May you find good in the total mess you’ve painted.
Now, I look back on you, misty-eyed Swiss man.
You've wrung me around a time I never thought possible.
My world warped at the sight of your smile and when you first asked me about California.
I saw a planet away from what you failed to share with me because I wanted to believe that one day,
I’d sit on that rock with you, out in the wild of our nights.
That I'd grow up beside you–in the halls and stories I wish you had told me.
You’ve been one of the hardest to forget, but I don’t want to take you away
just yet.
Too soon, you’ll fade so far away into the mountain’s shadow.
I wish you well, and I’ll always remember you in the orange light, on that one night.
How your eyes glistened in the young adult wind, and I wanted to hug you with the plight of all that’s good, warm your tall shoulders and dissolve into Montreal.
In the middle, I say hello to the guy friends I have made along the road.
Those who I’ve laughed so heartily with,
shared SpongeBob theories on our way to McKibbins,
the ones who let you ramble on about Kevin Costner.
Welcome, you university guys of sweet talk and jazzy brains,
blond buzzcuts and record collectors of swift voices and 2012 humour.
The ones that feel as nostalgic as the last days of school.
A salute to the ones you remember fondly,
how they perched over to show you pictures of their cats and twinkled their eyes in your horizon.
Saying your name with the weight of a thousand suns,
sounding like the sweetest bird.
Flying you by and blushing in the shuffles of envy, the Greek gods of smarts and curly hair.
I feel like a girl out in the wild of her young adult wind, when I want, and I want.
I search for the pulse when I avoid your eyes and look for you in furniture stores.
Your arm dances with your tattoos when you stand tall and make way before you smile at me.
In my head, I'm
jumping your bones and kissing you whole—all that sweetness just for me?
Let us not forget the sparse smiles and windy hair of strenuously energizing young Mark Ruffalo lookalikes,
and for the cherry on top of this whirlwind game, the water-laced bodies,
local surf dudes with eyes like the waves and threads so cool you’d wanna get tubed.
Let us not forget everything else.
Let us not forget everything else that could have been.
Let us not forget what was.
It’s been a treat. XO
This article originally appeared in Volume 47, Issue 2, published September 22, 2026.
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