I got a head start on my loving young. 10-year-old me left notes on desks in pink gel pen. 13-year-old me refused to send a messenger to ask a boy to dance, she could do it herself. After all, it’d be harder for him to say no to someone’s face right. Wrong, apparently. He left his dancing shoes at home.
16-year-old me unhooks trailers from cars in the pouring rain and drives them without her license just to talk to boys who don’t really want to talk at all. 21-year-old me drives way too fast and way too far at midnight only to be misunderstood. 22-year-old me pretends she has tickets to invite a boy to a thing and plans to buy them if he says yes. 23-year-old me pretends this too (because it worked so well the first time). 22-year-old me and 23-year-old me never bought them. 24-year-old me acknowledges they were indeed boys, not men, and she should have bought the tickets and gone herself.
But what can I say, I like to climb out on limbs. I never learned when my brother fell out of a tree, that maybe it’s dangerous, that you might break your arm – or worse. Maybe I just have a little too much confidence in my climbing. Maybe I’m not afraid of breaking something because I know, or I’m pretty sure, I’ll heal. Or maybe I’m terrified, but I still think vulnerability is necessary.
The romantic in me never wants to die. She can live without sunlight for months and survives on the little water that comes only from the tears that don’t make it out the ducts.
I really should be more careful though. I’d be wise to stop taking the hits without asking questions. There’s metaphorical callouses on my heart’s hands from holding on so tight to things that never wanted to stay. Why do we never want to let go of anything?
We can’t keep being this weak for each other. I need to take a hiatus from you the way I do with peanut butter sometimes. Go cold turkey just in time for thanksgiving.
I gotta clear my head. Go for a run. It’s a good time of year for it. It feels constructive, even though I’m dripping bad thoughts like oil and leaving a trail of decay around the city. I know it’s getting dark and hard to follow, but don’t worry I’ve run with my terrors before. Still, trail or not, you’ll never know where I’ve been.
I'm in the forest and you're the wolf. It's a manhunt and I'm sprinting because I can’t climb fast enough. Trying not to trip over your compliments.
It’s a family reunion of my fears out here – someone calls me sweet pea and I cringe. Sweet peas like grandma serves but cringe like the baked beans my father used to make me choke down before I could leave the table. I wouldn't go near one for a decade after that.
I wonder if that happens with people sometimes. Like something triggers; a traumatic experience, a moment of disgust, and suddenly we’ve sworn off them for good.
What happens next? Yes, I’m talking to myself, girl with resting heart rate through the roof, what else do you have to give? Everyone’s been taking so much lately. Even my tea took the top layer from my tongue.
A handsome stranger – self-professed, but I’ll oblige – gives me more in five minutes than I’ve been able to get from anyone, including myself, all week. He draws me out of the forest. He had me pegged by the boots and I’m reminded yet again that my heart will never not be on my sleeve. I thank him for handing back the hope I dropped and continue with my day.
My love. My love sticks out like a sore thumb. My love jumps from rooftops and spills hot coffee on your shoes. My love has no shame. My love tries to sell you a mixtape on the street corner but looks bashfully at her feet when you take it. My love doesn’t want your money. My love goes to bed on an empty stomach every night. I love my love, I do. It’s just, sometimes I would like to know what it feels like to wake up with some love left in me.
“You, wonder of my seventh world
The weather has been beating at the windows all summer
trying to throw tsunamis on all the burning
The sky that we are under claps
It can’t make up its mind
Me, in the sixth world
I’m walking around the city talking to strangers
asking if they’ve had enough love today
There are metaphors splitting through sidewalks like weeds
Nobody ever asks back
I stay in the car ten more seconds before I go inside
To swallow all the love that went unnoticed today
choke it down with a half empty water bottle
I think it feels like drowning in your apathy
but I am just growing gills”