The Truth Is Only a Feeling

“Do they know?”

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She asks you this on your third, maybe fourth date. You're curled into her side, wearing knit shorts that leave nothing to the imagination. Her tentative hand hovers then strokes your thigh.

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The date in question is wine and BBC iPlayer in your cramped student room, blackout curtains sewn shut above the bed.

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Both of you know what this is.

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“Know?”

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“About us.”

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You blink at her. Wonder whether you should lie, or risk torpedoing the moment built from fraught fingers.

Maybe you are the selfish one.

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“They know who you are,” you say. A technicality. They—your African parents who treat attending university at twenty-three with the same severity as a terminal illness—know her name.

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It’s her name that tickles your tongue between brief breaths. It’s her who kisses your forehead and holds out her arm for you to clasp. Her, who stays steady in your bed, unapologetically stroking your exposed thigh.

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And it’s you. You’re the one who asks this girl to kiss you, who makes an obscene sound when she does, and spreads her legs on instinct as soon as your head hits the pillow.

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Do they know you bite into the back of your hand to stop yourself from crying out, from asking her to stay, legs taut as you see constellations you never knew existed?

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Do they know it will always be this way? It will always be a girl. A girl who cherishes and lingers and walks on the side closest to the road?

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They don’t know. Can't.

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Or maybe they do.

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They do.

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They know, and it is a truth they refuse to acknowledge, to speak out loud. Yet, you've always wondered where your aversion to the truth came from.

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