you smell the way i used to after showering at camp
fresh and comforting like the shampoo they would give me that made my hair shine
the kind that smells like dew, pooling on leaves at dawn,
it falls on your skin because you've always been an early riser
and i'm just a transient girl,
fleeting like cold hands and cheap soap
a girl who's just okay.
you were always impressed because i could screw up many things each morning
and still be a minute early.
you'd watch me fly through the hallways and glide through the doorway
sitting down in my chair to fan the air by my face.
the size of my fear and area of my discomfort are bigger than the test i'm about to take,
but definitely not worth more.
because i haven't been writing lately,
as soon as the words leave my mouth they turn stale and feel silly,
just like this letter.
I need you like my brain needs a vacation.
I need a lot of things I can't quite grasp on to.
like a ladybug on wet leaves after a thunderstorm,
it can't hang on so it ends up in the dirt,
on his back for a minute, trying to get up.
everyone's a pessimist these days.
happy endings are really just affairs that turn out better than expected.
the world is a dangerous place
and i am, still a child.
I feel like, without you, I'm rotting incessantly,
never speaking,
just withering.
You brought me flowers and I told you what a mistake this all was.
I went on vacation and my cousin put them in a vase,
they were already dying,
except one.
So I taped it to the wall with the other single survivors.
My mom says its a sign,
I tell her I only keep them because they're pretty,
I think she knows I'm lying.
I'm afraid of caring about people because
caring is creepy.
Caring is for people who can handle themselves.
Every time I pass your work I beg my better judgment to drive me home,
forget the day you drove me to the el pastor theater
and maneuvered the car with one hand so you could hold mine in the other.
I don't know why you ever liked me.
I'm easy to touch, harder to love, bitter for things felt so loudly but left unsaid.
Loving me is a feat of lock picking front doors when the lights are still on.
I will move toward my porch to turn the lights off,
plan to install more locks but forget
and instead a spare key in the potted plant outside,
hoping
one night
you'd come crawling in.
