I gave him my Calamine lotion, and I have bug bites on my thighs.

We met for drinks, for kisses, for sharing a moment, knowing it would all end,

knowing we would both go back to our lives of searchings and commitments and already-established friends and lovers.

But then, as so often happens in these cases, we started… cuddling.

At first it was out convenience, sheer exhaustion, our sweaty bodies would collapse one onto the other after release, and panting, we wouldn’t move away from each other immediately, but let an arm drape over stomach, or a neck rest in the crook of an elbow.

Slowly, it started becoming a bit more dangerous; we would hold each others bodies, still quivering, feeling pulses and hearing breathing and watching pores leak leftover pleasure.

And then it happened: we’d meet and cuddle as foreplay. FOREPLAY.

Every week, he would go back to the wilds, to tents and plants and thick sun and warm beers and naturopaths.

And I would go back to concrete, the sidewalks and sweating buses and credit card machines and  sales reports.

And every weekend he would come to me, bitten, burnt, and between weeks of weeding and welding we found each others’ arms holding our own selves in tighter, each making sure the other didn’t fly away too soon, too quickly.

One day he came over and we just held each other in, clothes on, and then I knew: I knew he had to go before he had to leave, I couldn’t keep holding him in until the day he left and then just let go of both of us. I needed to hold myself instead.

So when he left, for the last time, I gave him my Calamine lotion, forgetting that we too have bugs in between the dumpsters and the grocery store aisles. Forgetting that scratching off my skin is no way to keep myself in, to keep myself whole.

I gave him my Calamine Lotion, and I have bug bites on my thighs.

When I itch, I think of him.