I carry my backpack, and the addition thirty pounds of stress that goes along with it.
I carry an MP3 player, filled with 1500 songs that make more sense to me than any math lesson ever has.
I carry a necklace from the 1800's that no one in my family cares enough about to remember who it originally belonged to. We both carry the feeling of being passed along.
I carry a notebook with letters I'll never have the nerve to send. I carry a pen that's been through more with me than any of my friends.
I carry my scraped knees and a tendency to fall to the waste side.
I carry my father's temper like a hot coal in the pit of my stomach. I carry his high expectations and my mother's victim complex. All three of which are, apparently, hereditary.
I carry Chapstick, Neosporin, and band-aids. Because things crack, and things break, and some things tend to cut.
I carry the same mindset as an Oxford comma and a worry of being replaced. We both carry the feeling of not really mattering.
I carry my uncle's divorce, & the way we buried him only a year after the papers were signed. I carry the way his ex wife's grudge is stronger than her children's love for their family.
I carry the dream catcher my dad keeps in his room, the one I got rid of years ago when I realized nothing would keep my nightmares away.
I carry the time my hero had his heart broken and spent the next year at the bottom of a bottle.
I carry the headstone that marks the beginning of my abandonment issues.
I carry a .037 fl oz tube of eyeliner in the hopes that no one will mess with a girl who always looks like she has two black eyes.
I carry a pre-med major that will never make me as happy as it will make my parents. I carry my family's hopes on my back & the way I feel like an emergency room with no more room left for patients.
I carry my best friend's name like an obituary I never got to read. I carry the way his head hit his windshield faster than it ever hit my lap, and the way I've hated sitting in the driver's seat ever since. I carry the way I never want to be invited to another funeral & the way each body they've buried makes me feel like I'm already 6 feet under.
I carry the mattress I slept on as a child. Pink flowers & blue satin & cold sweats detergent couldn't fade. The one I spent an entire afternoon scrubbing bloodstains out of, hoping my mother wouldn't notice when she changed the sheets. She never did, or at least she never asked, and sometimes I still wish she had.
I carry how my friend thinks her high school boyfriend breaking up with her is the worst that could happen, and the way I hope she always does.

I've been trying to figure out where to start with you.
It's like trying to put a pinpoint on a city that doesn't exist anymore.
I'm always looking at a faded map when it comes to you.
Maybe that's why I start all my sentences with "and"
and maybe that's why I haven't gotten a good nights sleep in 3 years.
Beginnings have always evaded me.
I've never cared for small talk or formalities.
The "oh that's nice" that seems to line the purse that is every first conversation.
The pin fell out of the wall again,
the map's crumpled on the floor.
It looks the way I imagine your body did.
Your body.
My bed.
And a highways worth of empty space.
Your body.
I didn't need another parking lot.
I needed a **** highway but you had to go and ruin that.
Your body.
I have driver seat phobia.
They say I fear control but what they don't understand is that I fear being out of control.
The same way you don't fear the dark,
you fear not seeing.

Your body. Six feet of dirt. Parking lots.

I'm so sick of having my foot on the brake.
I swear every steering wheel has the word "and" etched into.
The seams of the leather.
The stitches in your head.
I can't start a car or a sentence.