keep the fan on all night. if only change were simple. your ******* have grown and keep catching your eye in the mirror, a reflection of a girl you have yet to know. you have a boyfriend in buffalo, but here, there is a different boy with shaggy hair and glasses who drives you home at 1:30 in the morning and sings along with you to the radio. he is careful — even better, he’s convenient, and convenience is everything when being desired is what helps you see that girl in the mirror a little clearer in the morning. the sky is pink and nothing makes sense except how you feel right now, in this moment — like the earth itself is breathing in, swelling with air, reaching up, up, up and lifting you with it.

the boy in buffalo plays you jazz records on vinyl and takes your hand on crowded city streets and writes you love letters, but when you sit next to him in a church pew you can’t even raise your eyes to the crucifix. the clock is ticking, and you’re unsure, you’re scared. you steal away into the passenger seat of the boy with the glasses and make him turn up the radio so loud you forget about your own heartbeat. who do you want between your legs, and who do you want holding your hand? to both of them you could just be a beautiful idea of a girl, a long list of characteristics which they each want you to be but which do not add up to the sum of who you are. still, they both look at you from time to time as if they were hungry for an indescribable something that can only be found in the space behind your eyes.

it’s a summer night, you’ve kept the fan on, and everything is possible. you have rescued yourself enough times to know that you are never unrescuable, even though sometimes just picking your body up from the floor is a herculean feat. the sky is still pink and everything is balancing on the point of a knife but you feel your heart like a fist in your chest and you know that you’re going to keep waking up in the morning and that that alone is enough. the girl in the mirror looks like less of a stranger than ever before, the image sharpening ever so slowly. maybe change is only simple when we stop looking back at the people we used to be.

there is a boy in a bed in a room. tubes are coming out of his arm, one out of his nose, and something is beeping too loud. he looks up at you under half-closed eyelids, and he smiles, and you love him. no fanfare, no celebration — just something taking root in the pit of your stomach and blooming, an unseen flower.

the boy is still in the bed, the beeping is still too loud, but you go and sit next to him and you can’t let go of his hand. he’s looking at you like he knows, like he’s always known — like he’s been loving you this whole time, just waiting for you to catch up.

and in a hospital, in the midst of chaos and disease, a beautiful thing slips quietly into the world. everything is still, and you can’t look away from his eyes.

VI.

it means

driving with all the windows rolled down while the sun is setting over the clouds

and the perfect song is playing. it means

running across dark streets because

you snuck out to see him and he is parked down the road,

waiting for you. it means

holding his face in your hands at one in the morning

and willing there to be an alternate ending to the story:

not one where you leave, or he leaves,

but one where we stay here, looking at each other, forever,

and nothing else happens.

V.

so often you have felt the ache of the world in your bones, sitting in your chest like a boulder, but you’ve always gotten through it on your own

and although there is pride in that, and strength in that, it is also lonely.

you can only fight so many battles by yourself before you reach a threshold of desperation you wish you’d never known,

and it takes hours and hours of sitting on the cliff’s edge before you can bring yourself to stop looking down.

it takes a moment for you to notice that this time, however,

you are not alone in your looking.

maybe this boy means something as simple as not having to fight alone anymore — 

to have someone in your corner, who may not understand exactly what you’re feeling,

but who always cares, and who offers enough love to help get you through.

IV.

the boy takes you into his house and you come home that night with bruises on your neck. you took your shirt off

and threw it on his carpet and you’re trying to forget how he asked to kiss your stomach

and you said "no" too loudly. you kept telling the boy you wanted to leave,

but he kept kissing you and asking you to stay, and now you haven’t slept

and you have to hold open your eyelids if you want to get anything done. he keeps telling you that

you’re beautiful as if it should fix everything, as if his opinion alone can cure you, but all you can do is thank him

and hope he can’t see past the walls in your eyes.

he drives you home and you’re wearing another boy’s sweatshirt, but you're past caring.

you wonder offhand what he would do if he knew, and that’s all, and you stop wondering.

III.

there is a boy with big eyes and warm hands who is holding one of yours.

he is driving with the windows open, an old red car careening down a dark street, and he keeps looking over at you

and you can’t stop smiling. he pulls over just to kiss you and you feel

*****, you feel wild, you feel sinful. you also feel free.

sitting in a lifeguard chair on an empty beach with the sky a perfect canvas of stars, your head on his chest and his lips on your hair,

you feel beautiful and new. you feel understood, you feel known.

he whispers soft words to soothe you and his hand on your back

drives you wild in the best way. you can’t stop kissing him and you want to fall back onto the sand and live forever in this moment

but there is always change coming, always, and it’s coming soon.

even when you can’t hear the clock, the minute hand still spins along.

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.