1.
Photographs on my parents’ dresser of my brother and me at various stages of development. I don’t like that one on the left. There’s ice cream on my shirt.
2. The first bite of a delicious birthday cake. The second bite is never as good, but relish in those rainbow sprinkles as they slide their colors along the back of your throat, reminding you that you were a child once.
3. Her ribs are sticking out because she’s too nervous and riddled with images of you to ingest anything but salty water.
4. I remember the time we were sitting on the train and our knees touched and it was kind of cold because the AC was on even though it was November, which didn’t make much sense to me, but it didn’t matter because you made so much sense to me.
5. The Eiffel Tower is so beautiful at night.
6. Little Girl Fingers have feelings, too.
7.
Heart disease runs in my family but dementia doesn’t. At least I’ll be able to remember how you hurt me when my heart breaks.
8.
My life is a catch 22, but I’m only 17, so could you just give me a hint, please?
9. I wrote the first card for Valentine’s Day. I wrote the second card when you were in Africa. I wrote the third card when I realized I loved you. Now I’m left with a garbage can full of all the ripped up words I wrote to you. I used up all my best stickers on you.
10. The tiles on my kitchen floor are made of mosaics of blood spatters ?like the ones at crime scenes that always ?have a piece missing; the ?puzzle is incomplete. “Go ?get the scissors.”
11. I’m stabbing in the dark? looking for your hand? to hold and sometimes I think I’ve found your ?thumb, but you ?tend to let ?go pretty quickly, leaving? with my own? sweaty palms, reminding me that ?you’re yet another person who won’t hold me the way I want them to. ?I still feel the absence of your fingers in the spaces between mine, and no matter how many rings I wear, they are not heavy enough for me to pretend that you never let go.

12.

“Your book is nice. Does it come in Braille?”
13. Staple me to your collarbones so I can kiss them all day and forget how sharp they are. They can cut the inside of my mouth, but I will never stop finding them beautiful because you are a glimpse of perfection in a world of crap and you are the grumpy old man operating the lighthouse that makes a path for me in the dark ocean and you make me whole.
14. My floor is littered
with clothing
like stepping-stones to
better places. I
can’t bring myself to
wash it
15.


What is young love? It is a green bird falling into water and coming out a butterfly.
16.


Why can’t you hear me?
17.

I love you.
18.

I made you

right, made your heart
a full ear of corn.
I won’t give you any

roses. You whipped
out the potato peeler
Wrong utensil, I said

and you said, I don’t
care. You’re still
getting shucked.

19.


Your eyes are greener than the grass and the earth and new life in springtime, and every time we make eye contact, I melt.
20.


Look at me.