the smell of a new book
2. when jeans fit perfectly
3. trying on every perfume in the store
4. getting compliments
5. when people play with my hair
6. dancing alone in my room
7. talking to someone late into the night
8. preferring to just hear the silence of the phone over hanging up
9. listening to his heartbeat
10. when his hands touch the sensitive skin on my hips
11. cuddling
12. blue eyeliner
13. getting a text
14. coffee
15. locking the door to his room
16. the little noises he makes
17. laughing so hard you cry and can't breathe and sound like a dying walrus
18. trying on the bombshell bra because you know you'll never buy it
19. trying on prom dresses
20. wearing his hoodie
21. when he makes circles on my leg with his index finger
22. the look in his eyes before we kiss
23. wearing makeup when you're home alone all day
24. fuzzy socks
25. the way his hands hesitate at the edge of my bra
26. sleeping in
27. making someone laugh
28. watching mean girls
29. laughing with my mom
30. the shutter sound on my camera
31. wearing a tiara for the hell of it
32. wearing boots
33. riding a horse
34. when a sequel comes out
35. getting tan
36. having soft hair
37. singing in the shower
38. getting sneezed on by my dog
39. hiking by myself
40. birthdays
41. cupcakes
42. getting off a plane after 14 hours
43. coming home
44. reading the great gatsby again
45. standing in the shower without doing anything
46. jumping into the pool with clothes on
47. snow
48. writing poetry
49. getting kissed unexpectedly
50. kissing him first
51. having facebook notifications
52. walt whitman
53. falling asleep to the sound of his voice
54. spontaneous plans
55. taking the cookies out when they're golden brown
56. walking the dog
57. roasting marshmallows
58. mudfights
59. foodfights
60. friendly fights
61. finishing his sentences
62. crossing the finish line
63. talking in an accent
64. family
65. having stamps on your passport
66. green tea ice cream
67. seeing that he's online
68. pranking someone
69. ;)
70. winning
71. inside jokes
72. finally falling asleep
73. falling in love
74. ringing his doorbell
75. finishing something.

1) For every great skyscraper, there are petty fingers that built them.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
They were strong enough to raise a hammer, but not enough to raise a family.
I wonder if we were made the same way.
She is cold, and he is drinking, and this is our backbone.
She is alone and he is driving home too fast because sometimes you don't have to be in the wrong place to be looking for the wrong thing.
She is afraid and he is warm, this is the beginning spark of a forrest fire filled with broken glass shattering in broken homes with broken people inside on a broken piece of land in a city that has too much rain for someone to build an emergency room in. Everyone with a burden holds their confessions in their left palm and their beggings in their right and no one ends up having enough arms to hold each other.
2) One day the whole world will be in your hands too, and you'll see that sometimes darkness can blind you worse than the red glare the sun paints your vision when you stare at it with your eyes closed.
You will be brave, you will stand up straight, you will stop being royal when people stop painting Jesus with a purple robe.
Even the concrete asks the sun to make it a garden so try cracking your knuckles a little louder and maybe you will wake up as a mountain.
3) Autumn. When you wrote secrets on notebook paper and taped them underneath benches in the city park, you gave too many pieces of yourself to things that weren't made for holding that much weight.
But you said it kept you honest and there were never any reasons for me to ask you to stop giving away the parts of you I wanted to myself. It kept me humble.
4) I am alone
5) You are October in a green dress with a black mask around your eyes and you have stolen the breathe of that day. And I hope when you are 80 years old you feel a breeze sliding on the back of your neck reminding yourself of all the times it should have snapped in half during the moments of what should have been your hanging, how it takes you back to living life like you're always in the desert and stealing innocent people's money and smoking cigarettes beside rattlesnakes.
I hope you find a beach in the Caribbean that asks to be died on, I hope you learn to forgive people harder than you can cry on their shoulder. I hope you watch a sunrise that you spend the rest of your life thinking about. I feel like for that to happen you need your feet in the ocean or underneath a rocking chair, but I would settle for your bedroom.
6) But with you it was never settling.

My lips are almost chapped even though I use chapstick more often than I eat. They are in limbo, halfway between being soft and kissable and being dry and raw. I don't kiss you as often as I'd like, even though I kiss you several times every day. Kissing you feels so good, because your mouth is warm and soft and moves perfectly with mine. The touch of your lips is tender and sweet, except when it's not. Except when it's deeper and more urgent and your body tenses up and presses itself against me and your arms pull me closer. Except when I can tell you want more, more, MORE. Except when I want that too.
            2. My chest is small and pale and I might be allergic to something because I've got a rash. My chest is always covered by some brightly-colored piece of fabric. It's only bare when I'm in the shower and to be honest that's where I think about you the most. With the water running through my hair and across my skin I think about your eyes and your shy smile and your hands and your laugh. My chest is what you'd call 'petite' but I love it because it lets me pretend I'm a size XS.
            3. My arms are skinny but strong. They're pure muscle and when I move them around, miracle of miracles, they don't jiggle. They're pale too, but that's ok. I'll get tan this summer. It'll probably be a farmer's tan. My arms have about a million nerve endings and I never knew that up until a few weeks ago when you decided to discover what drives me insane. And guess what? You found it. I love it when you move your hands around because your touch makes me light up but the light dies down after a while if you don't keep reminding me that you're there.
             4. My back is the only part of me that got tan. I was wearing a one-piece swimsuit all of last summer and there was a hole in the back. My spine has a 17% curve and I have a few blackheads here and there because I work out so often. I can feel your arm slipping around my waist before it gets to where it wants to stay and that makes me crazy. It makes me want to lie on my back someplace where we can be alone and let your hands go other places (like to the zipper of your jeans or the scar on my ear)
               5. My stomach is the most important part of me. I like to keep it pink and clean and empty. I'd like it to be pure muscle and curves because skinny is good but I don't know if I have the strength to make that happen. Whenever you touch my waist (or anywhere, everywhere), something stirs deep inside of me. I wonder if you feel it too, if you feel it in your stomach or somewhere else or everywhere else.
                6. My inner thighs are probably the only part of me I haven't let you explore yet. Don't worry baby, I promise I won't hold back forever. It's just that my thighs are covered in stretch marks and memories of scars and I don't want you seeing that because I don't want to hurt you. But sometimes it feels like you're holding back too because you don't want to hurt me. I'll let you in on a little secret though- nothing can hurt me. I have armor made of titanium and nothing can pierce it except for words meant only for me and little touches that no one else can see. But here's another secret - there's a pretty little gap between my thighs that measures almost an inch if I lean forward a little bit. When I stand normally it measures only half an inch but that doesn't matter because I promise that I'll make room for you when the time comes, whether it's tomorrow or next week or next year. I promise there's room for you between my thighs.
                  7. My calves are muscled and look hot when I wear high heels. They are strong and that's really helpful when I kiss you because you're kind of tall and sometimes I have to stand on tip-toe. Sometimes one of my legs accidentally goes between yours and then you have to hold me up and I give up and melt into your embrace.
                  8. My feet are always cold. I don't like people seeing them because my toes are weird and so I always wear socks. Except when I don't, but that's only when it's summer and I'm too classy to wear socks with sandals. I wear cute socks though. Flamingos and whales and polka-dots and owls and squirrels. I paint my toes with colorful polish. Right now they're teal, like my eyes.
                  9. My eyes are ever-changing, but always beautiful. They're almost translucent sometimes in the sunlight. Sometimes they're angry and cold and emotionless, and that's when I scare people. Occasionally they're the color of jade, a light green that you could lose yourself in. Sometimes they're dark green, the color of moss and the top of the forest. Sometimes they're light blue, reminiscent of the sky on a cloudless day. And once in a blue moon, they're stony gray and I use them to pierce through the facade. Sometimes they're dark blue, the color of the ocean and I let the boys drown in them. But not you, baby. I'll keep you afloat.
                 10. My body was never a temple. But you can worship me if you want.