elinor white

okay so yeah, it’ll never work out. whatever. is it so embarrassing to keep trying anyway? 

‘cause maybe if i can’t have the whole i’ll find a piece of it huddled

between warm bodies in the backseat of a car,

or somewhere in the middle of broken electronics and goodwill

converse that don’t really fit quite right. maybe it’s hidden in the guts of that 

tiny little camera on a keychain that

works, somehow, but this won’t. we won’t. 

is it so embarrassing to keep looking for it anyway?

‘cause so what if i can’t press my lips against yours. huh? maybe i’ll press 

flowers instead. maybe i’ll memorize your starbucks order and fall deeper

into the car floorboard, deeper and deeper into this. whatever this is. certainly not

deeper into you, ‘cause it’ll never work out. remember? we aren’t stuck

in some wattpad fanfiction read aloud in the car as a joke. we aren’t 

gonna get kidnapped by one direction but maybe we’re stuck in a different way. not

kidnapped, necessarily, but stolen. taken away to a dark little corner of the earth and shattered,

‘cause not one person’s gonna notice we’re gone anyway. not one

ascend

girly

gritty

you know how when you’re fourteen everything seems to matter a little bit more? all of it

was a little more colorful— faster heartbeats. cursive handwriting. she was

trees, bushes, limbs, everything on fire

and nothing ever burning down. nothing ever left unforgiven. and yeah, yeah, i

know it’s cliche. shh. it’s okay. come lay down next to me. would

you do that for me? we can stay here all day if you want to. i’ll read

you a poem that isn’t about you and we can listen to young the giant. it’s a

little harder to imagine now, but it’s fine. i’ll be fine. just give me a few

dozen more years of flipping through pages

of a book i never even wanted to read. she used to say the difference between want and

need is when you’re an ocean away and you feel

a sort of drowning. a tug at your stomach. like

the waves in between you are churning and all the sudden you’re throwing

up over the side, except you were never really in a boat and it

all is some random metaphor typed up against some random keyboard. words shoved up against

a sheet of blank paper like how she would push you up against the

wall when you were still in belgium and she kissed you and everything was fine. if that wall

could talk it would murmur sweet nothings it learned from us. if this is

still a metaphor then you’re the fire from earlier and i’m the saltwater that

doused all your pretty orange flames. i don’t know anything about love

but i do know how to kill it. i know how to start all my sentences with “i

don’t want this to end.” and it always does, anyway, but i think

maybe the begging is its own kind of a lifeboat. maybe i still hold pieces of it

inside me. or whatever. maybe that’s love. maybe not. maybe love is just sending an email forgetting that it’s over and then having to remember that it is.

.

you know how when you’re fourteen everything seems to matter a little bit more? all of it

was a little more colorful— faster heartbeats. cursive handwriting. she was

trees, bushes, limbs, everything on fire

and nothing ever burning down. nothing ever left unforgiven. and yeah, yeah, i

know it’s cliche. shh. it’s okay. come lay down next to me. would

you do that for me? we can stay here all day if you want to. i’ll read

you a poem that isn’t about you and we can listen to young the giant. it’s a

little harder to imagine now, but it’s fine. i’ll be fine. just give me a few

dozen more years of flipping through pages

of a book i never even wanted to read. she used to say the difference between want and

need is when you’re an ocean away and you feel

a sort of drowning. a tug at your stomach. like

the waves in between you are churning and all the sudden you’re throwing

up over the side, except you were never really in a boat and it

all is some random metaphor typed up against some random keyboard. words shoved up against

a sheet of blank paper like how she would push you up against the

wall when you were still in belgium and she kissed you and everything was fine. if that wall

could talk it would murmur sweet nothings it learned from us. if this is

still a metaphor then you’re the fire from earlier and i’m the saltwater that

doused all your pretty orange flames. i don’t know anything about love

but i do know how to kill it. i know how to start all my sentences with “i

don’t want this to end.” and it always does, anyway, but i think

maybe the begging is its own kind of a lifeboat. maybe i still hold pieces of it

inside me. or whatever. maybe that’s love. maybe not. maybe love is just sending an email forgetting that it’s over and then having to remember that it is.

.