You're in a bar thousands of miles from home in a city that
your tongue struggles to properly pronounce
watching a seventeen year old chain smoking nicotine he bought from
a ******* the corner
when you first feel like you're beginning to settle,
a familiar weight settling in your stomach,
an old acquaintance a stone's throw from a stomachache,
so you slip off of your stool to stagger to the bathroom
where you clutch the porcelain and kneel with fingers poised
like a prayer to your gag reflex,
but you don't do it,
you just sit and feel cold tiles seeping a chill into your knees
and you're trembling.
You don't get up for a long time
but you know you have to settle and sit eventually.
When you go back to the bar,
a boy with a galaxy smile will take you outside
and buy you candy from a sketchy vending machine,
and you can let yourself believe that sweets solve everything:
sweet words and signs and cards tucked into your jewelry box,
tongues tucked between teeth in smiles and screenshots as receipts
of ten second Snapchat dreams.
But other people can't fix you.
Learn that.
Don't you dare let yourself believe,
don't you dare let yourself put something as fragile as
your happiness in someone else's heart
because it probably won't beat as hard as your own,
and it won't pump life into your joys for long,
and before you know it,
that happiness that you tethered to someone else is gone.
That's okay. You'll be okay.
You just need to learn that memories will only ever be memories,
that things only shine when you
remember that you have to keep them clean,
that the chemicals of development take white pages and make them
dark,
that photos come from negatives,
and that you've never had a predisposition
for rose-tinted lenses.