“Fourteen”
by Megan Hanlon
Before you dropped Jo and me at her car the color of a bruise and lied, saying you hoped we could still be friends; before the aching silent ride, your truck slicing the thin morning; before I searched the dark camp and found Jo and pleaded with her to go home; before I laid in the bed alone under a scratchy blanket, cold and confused and humiliated; before it became bitterly clear you had staged the fiery argument; before you and Travis stood outside, your cruel laughs rising through the shivering pine limbs; before you barged into the cabin, calling me a whore and accusing Travis of getting some when you couldn't; before someone began kissing me, but differently; before the moon hung high and white while I was trying to sleep, and the cabin door creaked and a warm body crawled in bed next to me; before you got angry and spiteful at my refusals and slammed the cabin door on your way into the night; before I pushed you off of me with a shriek of stop; before you yanked on the button of my Arizona jeans; before I pushed your rough hands away; before you began kissing me and tried to slide your palms under my Aztec-print sweater; before we laid in pitch black as deep as longing in the single bed in the smaller cabin; before we returned from our errand to find Jo and Travis and Mark had taken the beds in the bigger cabin; before you gave me my very first kiss so soft while sitting in your truck on the trail that wound back to camp, and I was so nervous I trembled; before somebody ran out of hard-pack Marlboro Reds and you offered to drive back to the gas station and asked if I wanted to come; before everybody but me, all seniors that year save for Jo who had graduated, drank Goldschlager with fluttery flakes and sucked on cigarettes and talked around the orange-bright bonfire reaching to touch the sky; before my friend Jo and I met up with you at a gas station glowing bright as a lighthouse to go with you and your friends, Travis and Mark, to a camp at your deer lease deep in the woods -
I was just a 14-year-old girl who didn't know any better.
Megan Hanlon is a podcast producer who sometimes writes. Her words have appeared in The Forge, South Florida Poetry Journal, Variant Literature, Gordon Square Review, and more. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is known for relentlessly honest essays that are equal parts tragedy and comedy.
by Megan Hanlon
Before you dropped Jo and me at her car the color of a bruise and lied, saying you hoped we could still be friends; before the aching silent ride, your truck slicing the thin morning; before I searched the dark camp and found Jo and pleaded with her to go home; before I laid in the bed alone under a scratchy blanket, cold and confused and humiliated; before it became bitterly clear you had staged the fiery argument; before you and Travis stood outside, your cruel laughs rising through the shivering pine limbs; before you barged into the cabin, calling me a whore and accusing Travis of getting some when you couldn't; before someone began kissing me, but differently; before the moon hung high and white while I was trying to sleep, and the cabin door creaked and a warm body crawled in bed next to me; before you got angry and spiteful at my refusals and slammed the cabin door on your way into the night; before I pushed you off of me with a shriek of stop; before you yanked on the button of my Arizona jeans; before I pushed your rough hands away; before you began kissing me and tried to slide your palms under my Aztec-print sweater; before we laid in pitch black as deep as longing in the single bed in the smaller cabin; before we returned from our errand to find Jo and Travis and Mark had taken the beds in the bigger cabin; before you gave me my very first kiss so soft while sitting in your truck on the trail that wound back to camp, and I was so nervous I trembled; before somebody ran out of hard-pack Marlboro Reds and you offered to drive back to the gas station and asked if I wanted to come; before everybody but me, all seniors that year save for Jo who had graduated, drank Goldschlager with fluttery flakes and sucked on cigarettes and talked around the orange-bright bonfire reaching to touch the sky; before my friend Jo and I met up with you at a gas station glowing bright as a lighthouse to go with you and your friends, Travis and Mark, to a camp at your deer lease deep in the woods -
I was just a 14-year-old girl who didn't know any better.
Megan Hanlon is a podcast producer who sometimes writes. Her words have appeared in The Forge, South Florida Poetry Journal, Variant Literature, Gordon Square Review, and more. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is known for relentlessly honest essays that are equal parts tragedy and comedy.