I’d tell her this is how I did it: I picked the night, I picked the boy. He was kind and liked me fine.
I picked the story. It was a Christmas party, early December. I wore an elf costume and face glitter. Bad Romance blared. I led him upstairs by the hand into his room. The bed was made; the idea pitched. And just like that, it happened. Glitter shed, I bled. Had to run down the stairs, out the door. Before midnight, that box was checked.
My friends taxied home with me, called it a victory, still called me Coco. My father still called me Woopy.
Understand? Keep and lose what you choose.
It may not be love, or even imaginable. How the sheets may feel cool, their hands damp, your body learning. How the bed of grass may feel damper yet, ants roaming. How crickets may watch in symphony. The backseat, as good as any. Don’t say sorry for the blood, leave proof of you in the letting.
Stay with yourself, strong when expected to be weak.
Coco Seney is a poet based in Houston, with roots in Kansas City and Chicago. She is completing her debut chapbook, Going Back for the Girls, shaped through the CharlotteLit Chapbook Lab in mentorship with poet Nickole Brown. Her work centers women’s interior worlds—what is shared in bar bathrooms, carried in bodies, and learned over time. Her poems ask how human pastness might be sacred, preserving memory through the retracing of girlhood, millennial culture, and ghost lives. Seney works in innovation and entrepreneurship, holds a BA from Rice University and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Find her @ReadCoco.