II.

there’s a boy kissing your neck in his car in your driveway

and everything is warm.

you told yourself to never do this again, yet here you are, and all you feel are his hands brushing your hair away.

the sprinklers in your front yard keep turning on and pummeling the windows with water, and

your mother is on the other side of the front door

and your breath is heating up the windows.

it is summer. you’re twenty and irresponsible, wild and reckless. you’re hanging off the cliff by the tips of your teeth and you keep on losing the moon.

there isn’t much time to think past split-second decisions and sometimes you find yourself

curled up on the kitchen floor in the early hours of the morning: clothes rumpled, makeup smudged, shame wrapped around your shoulders

like an old blanket, like a machine you hope could fix something.

the clock on the stove is frozen and blinking, green light casting strange shadows in the room

and you’re so tired, and you’re wondering how you could ever make him understand.