i'm not sure what it is, but tonight i'm thinking about people i used to know.
my childhood best friend, i hear she's awful now but i still love her no matter what, even though i haven't seen her in years. the boy who told me he was in love with me and gave me a crescent-moon thumbnail scar that i still carry today, having not seen him in four years. I look at my left hand and think of our friendship. My grandmother, long past ashes now, with her secret candy drawer, teaching me how to knit and giving me incorrect interpretations of country music. the boy that moved briefly into my drama class, downloaded one of my favourite albums to my phone and took my heart with him when he left. i think of him when i hear those songs, still some of my favourites. ny third grade teacher who told me about idioms and made me write my ks a specific way. my handwriting still looks like your name, sir. the boy who would fix my hair when it got messy, who moved on to cooler friends, and acts like he never touched my face for the sake of it. i still have his number. the girl who i loved books with for years, until we began to read different things and ran out of things to talk about. The boy i dated that sat on the floor of the mall with me and talked to me about all his favourite tv shows and held my head in his lap and never read the book i got him for chirstmas and now only calls me by my last name. the boy who i bought hotwheels in an airport with. i haven't peeled the complementary sticker off my headphones yet, so i haven't stopped thinking of him. on nights like these i miss them. i remember them tenderly. i still feel their phantom arms around me, and it is emptier than a lack of sensation. my heart is a bus stop, more empty for having been full.