I Mean These Words

1. When you first latched onto me I wondered if I should rip you off like a band-aid or let you simmer in a pot until you boiled over and scorched my skin. Now I’m drowning in the bubbling water and you’re too busy to even lower the flame. 2. You used to fiddle with my curls and pull on them until they jumped up like those flimsy plastic frogs I played with as a child. I tired of them in a week; I should have realized I was just a toy you’d lose interest in eventually. 3. I laughed that time you made a fist and showed me your ‘guns’ and resisted the urge to remind you that the only war you ever fought in was the one against your scarf. I wish I’d told you then how tacky I thought the action was, like a bright pink plastic flamingo left sprawled out on the lawn. 4. I’ve been told sleeping is the best way to forget someone but each time I close my eyes I see your phone all lit up with her message blazed across the screen. I wake up wondering if you can’t stop thinking about her either. 5. Last night I jammed in my headphones and turned up the volume until guitar riffs drowned out my pulse and basslines clouded my vision and all that existed was the drumbeat and this stupid ache in my chest that whispered, “I’m not going anywhere.” You used to mock my music and now it’s mocking me. 6. We never made anything official but I held you on my tongue like an ice cube, the idea of you melting and sliding along my bones. The cube fell out of my mouth and I slipped on it, skinning both of my knees in the process.

We have to choose joy and keep choosing it.

if you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?