“goodnight,” your kiss says, our skin pale and lips red.
“don’t,” i say. “don’t go.”
you smile into my mouth because you don’t want to.
our night-time habits are ******* with our heads. it’s hard to tell now, when we’re still trying to impress each other with magic tricks and hidden knowledge and by tattooing flowers and words onto each other’s skin, but in the morning, when we’re squinting in the too-bright light of the school hallways and sarcasm can only be emitted through minuscule sighs and shakes of the head, it comes creeping back.
we exist only in the night.

good morning kisses
goodnight kisses
kisses to taste the cinnamon on your lips
happy kisses
middle of the night kisses
gentle kisses
kisses because i like you
sleepy kisses
movie theatre kisses
oh god we're in an elevator by ourselves kisses
the stolen kind of kisses
kisses because you're too cute
wake up and see you and think you're the best person ever kisses
kisses just because

we stole things. it was a game we played. just a stupid game between a good girl and a good boy trying too hard to impress one another.
you slipped a packet of tic tacs from the display at the register of the grocery store into my hands, and as a reward i kissed you out in the parking lot, love and laughter falling from my lips. it didn’t matter that i don’t like tic tacs.

i just want a boy who touches me distractedly, like you're sitting watching a movie and he just kind of drags his fingers over your skin while watching and he doesn’t have a motive he’s not trying to tickle you or be ****** with you he’s just touching your skin and feeling the shape of your bones under that skin like it’s physically comforting for him to know that you’re right there under his fingertips.

i don’t want the stereotypical idea of love. i don’t need chocolates and flowers and love letters. okay? I mean, i just look at you and i think of you and i dream of you and i know that is all i need. you. it sounds stupid and crazy but i am crazy, and if this is love, then love is crazy too.
i feel so full sometimes. like, my heart… it keeps growing and growing until i feel so much that i could burst. i have so much inside me that i don’t know what to do with it all. it just consumes me sometimes, until i’m with you… and then you - you consume me.

i just want a disease to sweep through the world and for all the adults to die and then turn into zombies and then the kids will **** all the zombies and live in peace and harmony and then realise there is no such thing and turn against each other until they all die and then little flowers will grow through the cracks in the abandoned pavement and everything will be as it should.

i knew she went for a run every morning at seven am and that she loved red liquorice and that she despised pop culture and that she had an unhealthy habit of smoking cigarettes and that her favourite shoes were those black boots with the really incredibly high chunky heels and that she worked at the information desk at the local art gallery and that she had a college boyfriend whom she loved very much and that she chewed her hair when she was nervous or upset and that she hadn’t cut it for almost two years but i did not know her.