Love Letters

I met someone last year. It was the first time I felt not only understood, but also truly cherished, by a man. I grew up around male violence and experienced different kinds of it in adolescence and early adulthood, so this was very new to me. I was so surprised in his interest in me and so determined to keep it. Everything was going well, but his graduation date was getting closer and closer and he hadn’t found a job that would support him enough to live in the city. He warned me that he might have to move back home and said we could stop at any time, but it felt wrong to call off something that was making us both happy…