But what was I going to say to you anyway. The grass is in your belly and the high sun can’t spit through the leather that you’re growing on the back of your arms. Armadillos are segmented, you know, so they can slide plate tectonics skin.
“It’s not worth it.” Shove phone and hands into pockets. Knuckles wrinkle pink.
I pretend I am brave when really I am writing and deleting a snapchat that would have been “a bit much”. You pretend you’re relaxed when really the back of your eyes has a hunger that never stops its ache.
I ask you what’s up, you say, “In space there is no such thing as up.” I say that our current orientation would suggest, you interrupt, “The sun,” I say, ha ha, very funny.
You say, “Do you hear that?” Put a hand on the train rail. “It’s humming.” I say so let’s get out of the way, you say, “Hang on.” I say okay but my mom will be mad at you if I die and I can’t make it home in time to defrost the chicken. You stare at the place the train is supposed to be coming.
“It’s always like this.” You’re shaking. I don’t ask for clarification. Look at you out of the side of my eye, just in case you take flight. You live from a pressed space. Calling a crack in the door a freedom, all strung like a harp, ready to be used but resenting the fingers. God forbid you slip. There’s nowhere for you to fall in your house. Never knew a bed that wasn’t made in bile. Got used to high prices.
I say. If we get hit by a train do you think we still have to take finals.
You say: “I’m exhausted.”
It comes out all soft. Half lost between us and the wind and something coming. What dies in my throat comes scrambled in thoughts. Try not to let you slip when it’s one of the only times you’ve been actually honest. I want to tell you about the day I woke up and apples tasted different. About how I don’t know the last time I laughed and actually meant it.
I want to say I believe in a better sky. A wrist that turns up and the path of my blood that only looks like branches. A nest I can build out of soft words and silky hair. Use my own teeth to grind down the gravestones and call that interior decorated. I want to say that you’re allowed to collapse. That not all barbed wire needs to be crafted into cocoons. That we can take what is shaping us and shape it back, turn a spear into a sparrow and say we forgive hollow for the weight it hands us. I want to say I’ve been thrown out of the back of a car too and I know the road you’re on by the very skin of me, but I also know: when I was six I thought I could speak to trees. Sometimes when it’s sunny and I tilt my head back, you know. You know. I still feel warm.
I want to say it’s worth it for the six year old in us. Or the sixty year old. Or for being sixteen and actually laughing. You ever taste a dorito with peanut butter? So that’s that then. Something worth looking forward to. And when you finish that, come back. I want you to try to jump out of your own shadow. Or learn to ice skate. Or finish the book you’re writing. Forget about good enough. Forget about forcing it. Forget about worth. The worth is just you, and your tastebuds, and magnets, and new colors, and finding grasshoppers, and radio stations. When you’re done with it all, come back. I have more. A whole earth.
But what do I say. You’re tilted so close to the edge that a wing and a wound feel the same.
Just this, in our silence: I give you my hand. We get out of the way of the train.
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