"I am 20 years old, moth-bitten eyes, crooked shutter mouth, and heavy hands. I hate the summer, being yelled at, and my job. I don't know how to sing, sew, or fly a kite without it crashing so hard into the earth it resembles Alexander's sword.

I will not tell you how much I wrote about you.

Your name is caught in the undertow of my mind's salt water. I will keep rolling every letter on my tongue until it sounds right, until I can think of something more to write than the fact that you're gone. Empty pages don't need any more emptiness; I can feel them sag and cave in, asking me to write about someone better-there must be someone better. But this isn't a choice, and it never has been. I play detective with a pen, examining the battle field like a crime scene, trying to find years' worth of clues I was too blind to notice. I keep thinking that if we only exist together on a page,
well somewhere,
we're still together."