tiny vessels
(everyone jokes about me being emo, but i only started liking death cab a few years ago.)
the funny thing about relationships is that you can never forget the ones you'd like to leave the most. i remember the moment i saw brandon: it was one of those times, forever looping in shitty romantic comedies, when i stopped and just couldn't move again. i took a deep breath and said hi; his hair, long and curly, was backlit by the light from the room that fisk wasn't in and wasn't coming back to. i remember the first time he touched me--- grabbing me by my waist, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes as we walked back to calvin's car--- and i suppose i should have seen how obvious my mistake was, how many footsteps i would be following in when i decided to pick up the phone. his arm was warm and firm and i asked about his tattoo and we were dizzy, dropping into the back seat together; i suppose i should have known, then, that i had no choice. the curve of his eyelashes, how he looks when he's asleep; the bitter part of me reminds me that he knew until the day it was over that i loved the shirt he was wearing that night, red with white block print.
he rarely wore it.
when i told evan szumowski that the man i have loved most in the entire world said that he never loved me like i loved him, he laughed. cruel, maybe, but it was perfect; perfect because i knew he understood, because i knew my mother understood, because everyone i've talked to can do nothing but hug me and say sorry and know, on some level, that everyone will be there. i laughed too, and we laughed together, and it was funny. what can you do, i've said a thousand times to the thousand people who've asked; it was here, and then it was gone, and maybe it was never really here in the first place. when i told him that i didn't ever want to talk about it again, and that i would just pretend he never showed up and nothing ever happened and there were no shirts or lights or nights together laughing, what i really meant was that i can never go back to the moment when things were okay. i realize now that i was living in that one breath for years, caught in the moment between when his eyes met mine and he greeted me back; funny, it must be funny, how everything we are is shaped by passing glances.
the funny thing about relationships is that you can never forget the ones you'd like to leave the most. i remember the moment i saw brandon: it was one of those times, forever looping in shitty romantic comedies, when i stopped and just couldn't move again. i took a deep breath and said hi; his hair, long and curly, was backlit by the light from the room that fisk wasn't in and wasn't coming back to. i remember the first time he touched me--- grabbing me by my waist, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes as we walked back to calvin's car--- and i suppose i should have seen how obvious my mistake was, how many footsteps i would be following in when i decided to pick up the phone. his arm was warm and firm and i asked about his tattoo and we were dizzy, dropping into the back seat together; i suppose i should have known, then, that i had no choice. the curve of his eyelashes, how he looks when he's asleep; the bitter part of me reminds me that he knew until the day it was over that i loved the shirt he was wearing that night, red with white block print.
he rarely wore it.
when i told evan szumowski that the man i have loved most in the entire world said that he never loved me like i loved him, he laughed. cruel, maybe, but it was perfect; perfect because i knew he understood, because i knew my mother understood, because everyone i've talked to can do nothing but hug me and say sorry and know, on some level, that everyone will be there. i laughed too, and we laughed together, and it was funny. what can you do, i've said a thousand times to the thousand people who've asked; it was here, and then it was gone, and maybe it was never really here in the first place. when i told him that i didn't ever want to talk about it again, and that i would just pretend he never showed up and nothing ever happened and there were no shirts or lights or nights together laughing, what i really meant was that i can never go back to the moment when things were okay. i realize now that i was living in that one breath for years, caught in the moment between when his eyes met mine and he greeted me back; funny, it must be funny, how everything we are is shaped by passing glances.