SpamButForEssays

Twin fish swimming upstream, 

Fighting fight or flight and losing every time 

Strong together only because we’re both running 

But I would never run from you 

Making decisions only by not choosing 

Together because no one else can see what it is we’re afraid of 

Twin fish in the moonlight 

Fins glittering in the glow 

Refusing to admit they know each other 

Saying instead they understand 

It's easier, don't ask us why

You wouldn't deny me

And I don't give you the chance to say no

You don't kick me out of your living room 

You look at me like you don’t quite have enough energy to finish your thought 

but oh my god if you did I swear I’d make it worth your time

I want you to look at me like I’m a 12 hour day of tech rehearsal 

I want you to look at me like I invented the spotlight just so I could see you better 

I want you to go home just to realize you expected me to follow 

And finally,

2.1

You make me feel like I’m going crazy. Like I’m talking to ghosts about things they couldn’t possibly know, like touching your hair or seeing you on the grass beside me. You make me feel like the delicate fabric of the universe is about to unravel but probably not quite and if I don’t stop soon it will cease to exist entirely. You make me feel like I’ve just seen you because I see you in my dreams enough that it really really doesn't feel like the months that it’s been. Maybe I could reach out and touch you but then how much harder would it be to get out of bed. 

Don’t tell me about your life now, about your life after. Don’t tell me about bagels or bars or places you think I might like in your new city. You don’t get to want to talk to me and then not want to talk to me. You don’t get to want to see me but only on your terms. Grow the hell up.

2.2 

Take me. 

Come over right now and take me until neither of us can take anymore. 

I wouldn’t believe you if you said that wasn’t what you wanted. 

2.3

When I look into your eyes I remember what I’m afraid of. The physical manifestation of fear is thinking about you driving to my house out of nowhere, the physical manifestation of sadness is thinking about her instead. Not that daydreams are the physical manifestation of you or that you are physically manifested outside of my dreams, or that her dreams look anything like your eyes, or that her eyes make me think of anything other than her.

Sometimes buses remind me of us, but that’s about it these days. Luckily I don’t ride a lot of buses, more often cars, and I don’t usually remember that I’m going the wrong way

I’m still drawn to yellow, as if I can summon your body by draping my own in gold. As if sunsets are anything more than our life force screaming through polluted air. I can still taste your mouth on mine behind the extra strong mojitos and the blurry mirror selfies. And I can still see your eyes, with the sun behind them and my head in your lap 

I wake up from another dream about you. I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by moving on, if I just stay put you might come find me. Like a child lost in the grocery store. Despite the things I promised you, my coffee order changed. It isn't so cold anymore 

My head is a pincushion. I can’t understand the way you come and go like I’m a cheap motel room and you can’t stop yourself from breaking in. Every time I wonder if things might change I think of the shirt I gave you, the shirt I wore on the first day of school what feels like lifetimes ago, sitting in your drawer and reminding you that I only ever wanted to make you smile.

I know it took both of us for this not to work but if you wanted to be here with me now all it would take is you asking. And you know that. You know very well that I’m willing to be waiting for you around every corner, at the end of every hard day. You know it takes every ounce of my willpower and every shred of sobriety not to tell you I’m yours and that I probably will be for a while. 

I’m so glad you didn’t see me.

That I had the relative sense not to open every curtain and reveal what’s behind. That I knew better than to ask you for everything when neither of us had everything to give.

I want to tell you one day, but one day doesn’t mean anything. I want to tell you to stop avoiding this and come over but I don’t really think you would. 

So I don’t tell you anything. 

Partially because I don’t know if it’s even worth saying anything and partially because I honestly don’t know what actually happened in the first place. What am I chasing after? What do I get from this if it works out other than closure?

But when you looked at me there’s that feeling, not from me but from you, that there’s still something there. And maybe that’s why you’d come to a party but you wouldn’t come over. Or why you’ll start conversations that you never end. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep and why when I look at my phone and see your name it makes me want to throw it across the room. Maybe that’s why I dream about you and we only ever get as far as talking which by the way is a hell of a lot more than you ever bothered to actually say.

People tell me all the time that I’m so confident. Which... well I don’t really think anyone is as confident as they seem. I work in plus size retail and something I hear all the time is “I’d totally wear it if I was more confident” or “Someone with confidence could rock this but I would never” etc. 

I think it’s bullshit. All of it. 

What is confidence even? The only reason you’re uncomfortable with your stomach or your thighs or your grey hair or your skin or your cellulite or your stretch marks or your bust or your feet is because someone told you it was something you should be ashamed of. And the only reason people are taught that certain things are shameful is so some company can make money off it. 

Which obviously isn’t news. 

But oh gosh does it make me mad!! The amount of times someone is totally and completely rocking something and they cant see how good they look in it is infuriating!

The best way IMO to be confident is to completely throw out the idea of flattering. Because the modern (and by modern I mean the last couple hundred years) idea of flattering is “being made to look smaller. And I’m sick of it! No the bright green tropical leggings I just bought don’t make my thighs look any smaller than they are but you know what? My thighs aren’t any smaller than they are. That’s just the truth of the matter. My thighs and butt and stomach and arms are what they are and they are going to continue to exist weather I like them or not. 

I’m not going to tag this as body positivity because body positivity isn’t about self love or self acceptance, it’s an intersectional political movement about basic human right started by fat and disabled black women that white women such as myself have co-opted to mean basic self love and self acceptance.  

But my point is confidence is only what you make it and at the end of the day it’s not an easy choice but it is a choice you can make. Just wear what you want and if at first you think “oh but it doesn't look good...” I challenge you to think “so fucking what”. Because it’s not your job to look good and you don’t have to look how other people want you to in order to exist in this world. 

1.1

Everything was wrong. I feel very strongly about this now. You were wrong and I was wrong but we were right. I feel very strongly about that too. I can't sit here and list the good times or the bad times or weigh them out, I've done that a million times over but I need you to know that at the end of the day I think this was right. I’m just a romantic, which is a strange fatal flaw because it doesn't feel like one and was even stranger because of the sun in our hallway at school and the way your laugh made everything feel like a movie. And every time I saw you half of me screamed run while the other half said which way. I dont like throwing away friends I dont have for relationships I also don’t have. That being said you were worth it, or you would have been worth it. Every secret I thought I was hiding, every move I didn’t think I had the right to make. I made decisions for you without asking you, asking is a thing I taught myself to be wary of and so were you. 

I just want to know what parts you remember, if you remember any of them. Was it hard? Did you avoid messaging me the same way I avoided messaging you? When I say I play the victim what I mean is that I can’t be mad at radio silence that I had equal part in. 

1.2

The stars are connected. Like a giant silver safety net above us.

Do you know I wrote poems about you? About you, not for you. Do you know I got stoned and looked at the stars and decided I was lucky to be in love with

I used to start these things with an apology. 

Do you know I write you poems? And not just fucking couplets but real actual poems? Poems where I blame you and scream at you and tell you I love you? Pages and pages. Do you know that my new friends know who you are? Because how else am I supposed to explain why the hell I’m drinking tequila at one in the morning on a school night? And what am I supposed to say when I see my facebook memories from a year ago and can’t do anything else all day. And my friends who knew me then don’t like you. Because I play the victim when it takes two to plan a homicide and I still feel like it’s my fault even though the corpse is so clearly my own. 

I used to start these things with an apology, which is to say I don’t know where to go from here. Because my instinct is to plead with you, don’t you remember, didn’t you care, but that’s not really the point. I remember. I care.

1.3

She sat at the edge of my bed in silence for hours. Technically I invited myself but if she feels it she doesn’t say it. She just sits. The sun is coming in through the blinds and the cat is watching us like he knows. The rest of the house is asleep. She just sits. 

She shows me her music from across the aisle on the bus but eventually there’s no point in reaching when there’s no one beside me. So she comes over and sits and puts her headphones in my ear and I look out the window and I can’t even believe what I see in the reflection. And her music isn’t my style but it’s exactly what I want to hear. 

Everyone else is gone but I’m still drunk so I don’t want to leave just yet. So we put on that 70’s show and I think about telling the whole world how much I love her. Except my mom, right now. And she knows that part, and she doesn’t look at me at all.