maybe if i yell loud enough
across fuzzy love songs after my last shift
you'll turn your head like
the way you look at her in literature

and, maybe i let my eyes linger too long on your
blue hoodie, the blonde bits at the end of your hair,
when you walk me to class on tuesdays
i've done this to myself before and ill do it again

maybe ill drown myself in the number seven till
i can finally shut the **** up
and can look at its lines without hearing your voice

thirteen years old, you were too young
i cant help but say it pitifully, words trickling down my chin in strings
of empathy i dont know is really there or not. i want it to be
there were cracks by your fingerbeds and they were filled with sun,
bright and noisy, humming into still summer air while you slept
i couldnt, not that year

youre i-dont-know how old now,
someplace far, someplace i-dont-know how far but wherever it is its quiet and cold, i hope youre sleeping
or floating, i guess
skin turning to stardust as you near a sun that was never your own

you hold him,
black hair against cold skin you hold him
even though youre still in blue spring
and he's somewhere else. somewhere over hills youve only seen pictures of, flowers and tall grass tying around your ankles.
like an ocean, when the wind runs through it right

he laughs on top of the hill you were supposed to walk up,
when its sunset by the lake
(the place no one would find, not for miles of blue water)
you were supposed to. you were supposed to sit under the little tree and sleep over rocks
supposed to cry little words into his shoulder,
supposed to hold him. supposed to hold him and stay there until flowers grew from your ribcage,
little twisting vines blooming gerber daisies

so you do. you reach your arms across oceans, scan skylines
walk across realities until you get to the picture of the hills,
the one with the oil paints your mother saw once, in a town with no name
and when hes not there you wait until they find you first. (it takes till summer)

i stopped wearing makeup
i think when i shaved off my eyebrows,
(i wasnt allowed hair because id just pull it out again)
fake freckles to orange skin to nothing

"whats your favorite song?" my voice is quiet, i dont know if he can hear me a neighborhood away. maybe ill make him a casette tape like in the tv show with the lost kids, send it via stumbled conversations and the crowded hallways we float along like its the river of styx (i have 2 coins.)  

i like to pretend you wear that blue coat because you know it makes me smile, maybe your messages got misplaced somewhere. ill wait for you, across the mud where those who have wronged you are stuck, ill send little messages through my fingers alone (in the air, spelling letters, or on here. youll find them soon enough.)

i will take you to the piano hall, with the pink walls in the bad part of the neighborhood
we will sip rosé and slow dance in the sweaty gym
you will speak soft, and ill fix my hearing so i can appreciate you

all my dad bought was tequila,
so i spent my evenings staring into it, plugging my nose
(orange is my least favorite color.)
drip drip drip, onto our sidewalks, like an iv in an inevitably diseased vein
its still coming down, slowly. you feel it if you dont move
swallow me, into tunnels made of clear plastic film,
dry me out until i am the dust left by summer