L.A.

eight years old, chasing fireflies in the twilight, their glow a fragile echo of the love we thought unshakeable.

those years bled into decades. high school hallways became minefields, your gaze something foreign heard from across the cafeteria.

the house we said we’d buy when we were old enough became a mirage, a memory on the wind that carried you towards a future I wasn't invited to.

his name hangs heavy on her tongue, said only with love to give. maybe in another life i’m the varsity jacket with eyes that follow hers instead of tracking spirals.

the street lamp that illuminates our figures is a monument to the chasm that's opened beneath us. every harsh word you say feels like a shard of glass in my body.

i want to tell you it's stupid, this fight. but the words die on my tongue tangled with the desperate truth.

i love you. it’s a heat that consumes all logic, leaving only this ash-filled silence in its wake.

and suddenly everything feels so small compared to the immensity of this, of wanting you.

it’s a feeling i can’t explain, like eavesdropping on a language my mouth had just begun to speak.

the air was thick with unspoken things. tentative, nervous, i brushed a kiss against your freckled cheek.

you turned to me, eyes meeting my own. a hesitant smile curved your lips. was it a game? like the ones we had played before?

mere teenage saints defacing the immaculate portrait painted of us.

your voice sounded like a melody that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, and yet it was my favorite thing to listen to.

we meshed together in a duet of secrets. confessions that remind me why i am a girl.

we share a lip-gloss stained cigarette under the hum of fluorescent lights. there are a kaleidoscope of futures that stem from this moment.

sweltering nights pressed us together in my twin-sized bed, sharing secrets too raw to speak aloud.

maybe it was the heat, maybe it was something else.

now your eyes meet mine, catching the echo of that memory. whatever we are begins to blur at the edges, replaced by a deeper feeling, a current pulling me out to sea.

the sound of a box fan is but a distant hum. we aren’t ten in my bedroom anymore.

all that remains is the space between us, the air charged with tension so thick that i cradle it in my hands.

she was an image that artists could only dream of creating across the table, oblivious to the riot in my chest.

the whispers we shared through years of friendship had snagged on something unspoken, a yearning that echoed in the space between our laughter.

i repeated to her the same words that had been heavy on my heart, tumbling out of a cage i’d built with stolen glances and unheard words.

her smile faltered. the world had stopped like a record, the silence crackling.

“we’re not meant for the same things,” she said. “not like that.”

we left the diner not long after, the streetlights blurring with tears i couldn’t seem to outrun.

the scent of his cologne is a ghost clinging to your hair. the mere mention of his name is a barbed wire fence, a reminder of the lines we shouldn't cross.

you leave me in this darkened room with nothing but this guilt — a bitter, cherry-flavored aftertaste on my tongue. it will linger for the rest of my life.

we fight like cornered beasts out there, claws bared, words flung like grenades. but here, amongst a whispered plea to a god unforgiving, and your name on my lips tastes like forbidden fruit.