27.1.22, or girls who love girls and the girls they used to know
here's to best friends forever (as forever as middle school can take),
and to the way you're everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
to how I memorized you in baby pinks, twenty-fives, lana del reys, napalm skies,
and in all those stupid letters you must hide under your bed.
the only ghost I ever knew was the bump on your living room floor,
or the way your backyard spreads to a dirty-beige concrete wall we seemed so scared to touch.
and I wonder if you still handmake books for your fancy overpriced dolls,
or if you keep that old TV on at night even though your dad despised it,
or if you think of me half as much.
like when I arranged your first kiss with the boy you liked for ages
and when we buried his sappy gifts on your garden when you broke up
it was one of those silly breakups only middle-schoolers know how to invent and you wrote and played all the roles too well. the sort of tragedy we put ourselves through to try and make sense of heartbreak songs. it never truly works.
he's grown to be the nicest, though. I wonder if you'd like to know that.
I ran into him the other day on campus. we go to the same university now. he smiled at me wide and treated me like an old friend, and for a minute I really bought it. I really felt like I was his old friend.
It's funny, though. I know it wouldn't go the same if I ran into you.
not anymore.
and it's weird how I don't miss you but I feel the lack of you in every empty bus seat I see.
I can picture you sometimes. how you've settled into a degree you sort of like. still dating that boy who's sort of nice. doing what you think is sort of right. how the awkward silence fills in blanks of what once were paragraphs.
like when I hid a panick attack on your bathroom during your fifteenth birthday, and how you gave me a polite smile when my mom picked me up. I was all pale and dizzy and unprepared for goodbyes, so maybe it was on me all along.
"We need to see each other more often!"
it's been four years.
well, here's to my obnoxious memory remembering your birthday and tying it to the reminder of "I should not text".
but I come across your pictures when my vicious devices decide I should come across your face. and the things I wrote for you. and some of our leftover plans.
still don't know what to make of them.