the first time
you feel the word
"together"
touch your tongue
is always
the strangest.
he was the smartest in
the whole class,
and at this I was
overcome
with a childish, passive,
pressure-filled
chase,
only speaking to him when
he initiated,
throat creating new, lie-filled,
obligated ways to
laugh
at his jokes.
I almost asked him to
dance
on valentine's day.
(I've always been drawn
to intelligence,
to someone who can teach me
more than I know.)
he hugged me on
the second to last day I spent
in the first place I'd ever
loved.
I spend my first day in florida
missing something we
had never become,
in the same way I
didn't know I would miss
the steep arizona mountains
until I had left them behind.
I experienced a fake melancholy
in a new house
far away from what I had always known
as home,
turned the light on
and sat on the edge of my bed
as my mother did dishes
and watched me through my
open door,
the soft light
pulling her feet towards me.
and now, we're starting over,
ears still full from the
pressure of soaring,
a new type of third grade,
the sunshine state just beginning
to make another person
out of an ignorant, selfish
child.
but we haven't gotten there,
not yet.
for now,
in a place where you have to put
the area code before
the phone number,
I learn his name
