he looked like a stranger. walked up on my porch in the dark and with rain. i thought i'd feel butterflies. i felt a little sick. a hug and i felt nothing. he was totally different. "who are you?" not the boy i once fell in love with. someone different. broken spirit and too many drunken nights maybe. i yearn for that other boy, with the soft gray-blue eyes and crooked teeth smile. where'd he go? he said five words the whole time and i was glad i didnt have to hold a conversation with someone i didnt know. (i missed my navy boy. the one who loves me.) i wondered how it came to this. meaningless sex on a bland couch with no expression in our faces. i knew it was wrong but i thought itd feel right. it felt like nothing. it wasnt even good. love makes sex good. the love is gone. the good sex is gone. i didnt know that. i couldnt move afterwards and felt numb to everything. i thought about times when he meant something to me but i didnt blink. i closed my eyes to the windshield wipers. i felt like i should be there, lonely but with company in the car i've always dreamed of. and we would ride down the road and he would take care of me. but thats gone too. another hug, this time for goodbye. "are you alright?" why wouldnt i be? you make me hate you. but i really dont hate him. i dont know him. he's the same stranger i knew years ago in the back of the classroom with dollar sign high tops. i cry not because of tonite. i cry because of all the lost nights of tears and pain. they meant nothing. he was nothing special and i finally feel confident that i have broken free of him. * * * and i thought the whole time of other things, people, places. where i wish i couldve not done this. just skipped it and realized that he was someone different. and it makes me miss him less. i searched for comfort in his eyes. where i had found it so many times before. warmth, trust, love. nothing, nothing, nothing. i felt like it was the first time we had met and i paid him for sex. bad sex at that.