note this down, please

06

written upon the back of a school-owned textbook; to be read by many later and never understood

•••

flicker, 

fl ic ke r, 

look away. 

I push strands of my short  hair behind my ear as I stare. 

My eyes are tentative and timid; demeanour calm and cool; with a ghost of a smile playing on my lips. Usually, flashes of the commotion at home appear beneath my eyelids but nowadays, 

it's just him. 

The way he smiles sheepishly when I walks past, the awkward way in which he carries himself, the way he smirks when he talks to me, the way he's so sarcastic, the way he flusters when I'm around. 

My friends all tell me that he reciprocates; yet I don't know what to believe. 

Because the way he blushes bright red on his pale skin talking about her, the way he gets flustered when I ask about her, anything about her- just her, her, her- it all tells of a different story. But he helps me; he helps distract me from the chaos of my existence, from the cuts on my body- from everything. 

Even if only for a few hours, I become carefree-