(a five year collection)

I. I told you one evening that beautiful moments make me sad.

II. And I can’t explain what the look of someone who wants to kiss you is like except with these words: It. Made. Me. Want. To. Kiss. Him. Too.

III. Some days, you wake up to find texts informing you that people you always liked actually prefer someone else. You learn that friends you would do anything for rely on the friendship of others. You realize that even big fish in a small pond are appetizers to whales in the cold ocean.

IV. So I voiced this regret, in the middle of a nice moment, and felt the air chill a bit at the pessimistic thought that something this special might not last forever. And I felt my words hang above us for a moment before you brushed away the invisible webs with a light tapping on my shoulder and the reassurance that “there will be more.”

V. Maybe I don’t really know anything about being in love. I know about the pressure of a heavy arm on your shoulder and the electricity that comes from an almost-kiss and the mixture of two ever-increasing laughs and the frailty in admitting your hurt. But love? What would I know about that?

VI. He cracked my world on a January night when I emerged from my room like a shell and cried into a paper ice cream cup.

VII.  Hand holding. There was a poem about it I read from a long time ago that goes like this:

| I don’t know what the thing is about

Hand holding

That I find so beautiful

Maybe just the simplicity of it

Because

Intertwining fingers can say so much

More than words can, or poems

That try too hard |

VIII. I would expand the memory of first holding his hand. I’d stretch out the feelings in letters and solidify the emotions in syllables but I think that’s just the point. It’s trying too hard. We held hands and. It. Was.

IX. And there was more. More moments where I looked at you with my heart in my throat and thought that if your heart was beating like a drum than mine must be beating like the hard footsteps of sneakers on asphalt. Nights where I stepped off the sky ride with knees made of marmalade, standing under the hanging white lights while you were off on the phone, wrapping my arms around my chest and realizing that in a park full of people and lives and stories, my heart was focused on a singular you.

X. Today, sitting on the couch, my head on your chest, I asked you What Have Been Some of The Greatest Moments of Your Life So Far? and you said I Don’t Know, But They All Involve You.

XI. And so I’m writing about it. So that I won’t forget and so that you won’t forget either. So that one day, whether we’re together or not, we can look back and remember what it felt like to be eighteen and nineteen. My curls on your not-so-bony shoulder. Your thumb pressed on the back of my hand. Kisses that taste like blueberries and peanut butter. Being young and feeling so certain of love and so uncertain of life and absolutely dizzy with the wonder of them both.

XII. But the last line, the final scene, the ending monologue, would be that night. The pulling back of lips and the opening of eyes and the realization that everything was new

and sweet

and would always

happen

again.

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