I.

there’s a boy with shaggy brown hair and bright eyes who runs after speeding trains and rubs my back when I’m scared and always helps me find the moon.

I can still feel his hand tracing circles down my spine.

he is not entirely unprecedented, he is not entirely polished and confident. sometimes both of us are too nervous to look each other in the eye,

but this is forgiven.

this is a boy with black-framed glasses who has suddenly grown strong and steady, whose arm around me is an anchor, who hasn’t missed a day in telling me that I’m beautiful. this is a boy who is causing a small earthquake in the heart of a girl who thought the fault lines shooting across its surface had settled

long ago.

it’s no secret that I’m still figuring out who I am,

how all of my fingers and elbows and teeth fit together, and that makes me nervous. I don’t want the boy to become

the latest casualty in my misguided journey of self-discovery.

on the knife-point between nineteen and twenty, teenager and adult, this is where we stand: the boy makes my heart flutter, and that’s all I know.

tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m way ahead of you, and I’ll probably pay a price for it,

but just think about the way he ran after that train. the way he got distracted by the moon, the way he whispered to me in his car,

and tell me I’m wrong. go on, tell me.