He Doesn't Know Why

a few days ago i confided a secret in a new friend, a boy who had introduced me a few weeks ago to fleet foxes. i've been listening to 'ragged wood' often but i didn't notice the correlation between the situation that i'd find myself in with this boy and the words to this beautiful song. i am unable to love this boy because i am in a long-distance relationship with another, very different, person who will be arriving to stay with me for six months in a month and a half from now. since meeting my new friend i have been driven to distraction by his poetic way, amazed at the freedom i feel in expressing myself to him, have fallen unfortunately in a type of sad love with him. we had spent a few curious nights conversing until the wee hours and ending up curled like kittens around each other, clothed and warm in his bed. we kissed in a moonlit garden. we tiptoed delicately around the romance that we could not have. and i have shattered, with the breath of my secret, our understanding. i suppose it is a good thing, but find myself despondent nonetheless. i wish i had never given him that crystal ball to hold. he was too innocent. i had told my friend a few weeks before my worries about my mother. she had been a stripper after leaving my father and finding it impossible to give her children the various lessons and comforts that she wished to give us on a grade nine education. though she had found more respectable employment and a rich boyfriend to help her fill in the gaps, she had lately regressed to a type of 'whoring' that worried me. though i can not know the particulars i do know that she has been getting paid to have lunch with rich businessmen for the beautiful company and witty conversation she offers. she is a beautiful woman and a very fine person but i feel that every date she has degrades her. not a good situation. what i didn't tell my friend was that young as i am, i have forayed into her world. last year, floundering and unsure, oppressed and unhappy (i won't go into details), i decided to make money fast and run away. i never reached my goal, thank god. but i did walk through the hellish underworld of prostitution. i sold my body for $80 the half-hour in a condo downtown. i welcomed twenty strangers into my arms over two cold months. i became scared of my shadow, a shell of my former self. i quit, got tested, found i was healthy, and have vowed to myself never to repeat. when i told my boy the full story of the past two years, he didn't know what to say. he didn't know what to do. he said 'it's just something i don't want to hear about.' later that night i went up to his room and knocked on the door. he was lying in dark in his bed. 'it's not a charade,' i promised. i lay my head on his bed and left my feet on the floor. he petted my hair kindly. we said nothing, nothing, nothing. he suddenly kissed me, lay back down. without unlacing my boots i curled around him and he slept. i watched dawn come and left at 8 without any words. there's nothing he can say. i'll have to find my original mind on my own.