Amanda Swenson

How We Forget

It is snowing outside again, and I think of eating candy cigarettes with a boy at the top of the jungle gym slide. I had forgotten my gloves, and my hands were stiff and cold. A beaming red at the joints.

Too many boys, too many memories. I don’t remember his name, but this boy told me he wanted to fall in love. I just wanted to chew on my candy cigarette.

He touched my thigh, under my scrap jeans.

This boy was like so many other boys attempting to fumble and grapple toward his own knowledge and understanding of the world. A nod, a no.

In the cold, forlorn winters in North Dakota, whispers and gossip shrink over those white, salted streets until nary a person didn’t know a name, form an opinion, or lean over a table and say with bated breath, “Did you know…?” Over quiet dinners, in gentle homes, across roads with sweet, serene smiles those harsh words drove stakes and deaths into realities.

The boy’s home was a beautiful home with white carpets, a piano, and a fridge full of food that rich people eat. I had never seen such food. Food like avocados and mangoes and quinoa. Words like “organic.” Words I would mispronounce time and time again.

I knew that boy wanted to fuck me. Like all those boys did. He took my hand and smiled. He swallowed hard, his throat muscle flexing, and then he grinned.

I always turned away from those boys and closed my eyes. How hard it was becoming each time with each different boy, the world pressing harder upon me. In my fantasies, my life was colorful and beautiful and not tainted by the grey landscape I just couldn’t run away from.

Amanda Swenson is a horse girl.