one summer ago.
your fingers slide against against a glass screen, hitting letters
typing words with the intent of shooting to kill, you think i need to know about your new life
it's urgent right? you're adamant about your perceived notion i just MUST know about how you never knew you liked getting your ass grabbed
and how you're a fresh dropout (wouldn't be the first thing you quit)
i chose the college next to yours, now anxiety wreaks my bones, i have to face realizing i'll have no one i know up there
trashy and brazen, i can't remember why my eyes even widened in shock when it's always been all the same
your hands are undoing the buttons of virgin jeans, meanwhile i'm staring into the basin wondering who's looking back up at me
if prancing away makes you feel whole inside, then do it by all means
but don't return with your worn slippers and torn heart when you realize i was never the problem
-
now.
to stay in the same place and move on, an art i've mastered, i mastered my craft
i come back harder than a boomerang, like the snap of a rubberband
still a couple years your junior, but this year, i'll be a grade ahead of you in college
fresher in the morning, the dewy grass is greener on my side
now i share land with a boy with bluebells for irises, and a heart of untarnished gold
and she walked out on you.
what's it like? your crackled ego? skittering chest pains?
you're caught in a trance? adrift in a sea of pain, holding onto nothing but plywood of a crashed ship that you called love.
is every move you make infused in sorrow? is every breath you take you're hoping is your last?
i was there once.
went under in epiphanies and washed up on an unremarkable island, beside the other girls you left for dead
forlorn with vacant yet glinting eyes...
but there's a cruel brilliance in me that just knows you'll drown
bound to the weight of your mistakes, your boulder will snap your limbs on the sea floor
and as effortlessly as you came, you'll go
nothing left but guilt and blood in the water
don't you feel it? the slow rumble of footsteps, belonging to the intellectually blessed, waltzing out of your pathetic life?
- A.H.
