“are you sick?”

she sounds worried and i shake my head, almost laughing

“define sick”

he rests his head on my legs and whispers

“are you okay?”

i nod and he says he loves me

and i hate myself all over again for feeling this way

when i am surrounded by people who would do anything for me

the longest summer

it starts with cardboard boxes. cardboard boxes and tape. lots of tape.

somehow they think the tape will contain the memories they pack away; contain them so that the missing doesn’t hurt. somehow they think the tape can muffle the distressed screams coming from their wide-open-with-fear-of-the-unknown mouths, they think the tape will save the from the inevitable shattering of their hearts. that’s how the summer starts.

there are many nights of wishing. wishing for more, wishing for less. there are good nights, with 1am texts that put a smile on her face - a smile that doesn’t fade away until she falls asleep 2 hours later. and there are bad nights, more bad nights than she can count. bad nights, pitch black nights, where the stars don’t shine, where the moon doesn’t reflect the sun but rather what she sees in the mirror - empty, empty, empty eyes. there are many nights of wishing. for a savior mostly.

there is saving. there are people, there is God. there are miracles. rain, and moving trucks, and, thank God, more rain. there are always miracles.

there is disappointment. high expectations, shattered illusions. a lot of walls crumble and they, still, stand in the rubble; trying to figure out the best way to put themselves back together.

there is hope. a small green plant. a 3 and a half hour skype call, “i miss you” texts, music that makes her dance.

it ends with boys. a been-here-for-10-years boy, who doesn’t mind when she starts the conversation and forgets to text him back. a will-be-here-for-as-long-as-you-need-me boy who cares about what she has to say, who reminds her that she is loved, who makes her laugh, who keeps her moving forward with promises of December. boys. a boy who encourages her to live the way she needs to; with her voice, with her soul, with her heart. a boy who holds doors open and plays the piano like their father; which they know first hand puts broken hearts together better than tape.

closing your eyes and feeling the black and white key’s magic is always better than tape.

when you lose home

a hollow in your chest

you are only sure of one thing: whatever you had - it is never coming back.

when you close your eyes you can’t remember how the furniture was laid out in the living room; you cry until you feel the old bathroom tiles against your cheek, you decide you will sleep until you remember everything.

forgetting comes first.

when you close your eyes all you see is blurry faces and outlines of familiar beds. you think about picking up the phone and saying the things you should’ve said when you could remember what their voice sounded like saying your name, how their arms felt around your waist.

in the end it hurts too much to think at all; you wish for the ground to swallow you and make night your new home. you wish to see nothing but black when you close your eyes, light is too easy to love and too quick to go; darkness never blinded you, darkness never left you alone.

a hollow in your chest;whatever you had is not coming back.

I Forgot Things I Didn’t Remember

these streets are smoother under my feetthe horizon is familiar

flat and fallingwith a cloud filled sky

it doesn’t get any bluer than this

what do you do when you come back to nothingdid you forget me already

have you moved on that quickly(i did

i’ve forgotten me)

a mother’s secrets

she wishes we still had a garage so she could sit in her car, turn the engine on, and let it run.

(716)

memoriesshattered before his eyes“they just blasted our neighborhood apart with dynamite-literally”

they’re shooting a moviein that very spotand as they drive through his childhood cityhe shakes his head and laughs facetiously“you’re on the set baby, take your pictures now”

she chuckles nervouslywishing she could scream “sorry”wishing she could say what she’s thinking

this isn’t a movie setthis isn’t a highwaythis is your yesterdayyour legacyi’m sorryyou had to see it like this

i’m so sorry it’s ending like this

the Fourth of July

when you said “i love you” my heart didn’t flutter,it just swelled to the size of the moon; i said “i love you” and for the first timei knew what it meant.

you love meyou do(i love you too)

i have nothing to say about yesterday

she said you were coping

extensively

overcompensating

i don’t know

everything seemed a little off

but they haven’t been on for so long

i don’t know about yesterday

but i do hope you’ll miss me

when i’m gone

first time

she’ll wear the dress he said looked nice and even though he’ll be 300 miles away it’ll help, she thinks, to make her feel like home isn’t really lost

SAUDADE

my sister is small and i wish she would stand taller i know she hates when people ask if i’m older my sister is quiet and i wish she would speak up i cry the most but i know she has tears toomy sister is the only person i can talk to everyday without going crazy

she doesn’t know because i don’t say it as often as i should but i love her as much as she loves me maybe more

me and my sister we’re holding on to one threadshe’s the last bit of home i have left

two against the world

this is so passive-aggressive of me, but it’s been just you and me for so long - how can you be so good at adjusting. (i am jealous of your moving). i am stuck and everything around me is changing - you are changing, and you are not supposed to. it was supposed to be you and me, what happened to you and me, what happened to plans and dreams, and when did you get so much taller than me

do you remember when we used to look at the clouds and see things

(two girls are apart and they are doing the best they can)

he tries to run away but he is losing everythingand he says, he says he doesn’t mind but he doeshis eyes can’t lie and they are screaming

h e l p m e

she builds a box from the ground up and they talk about itfor weeks because oh myhow prettywhat beauty

the door disappears when she locks herself inand only when they notice there are no windows do they ask

was it lovely at allif it had no light

saturday night

she falls asleep imagining that she is in a much larger room, with three blue walls and one gray; in a much bigger bed. she imagines that her best friend is half asleep next to her; there is an earbud in each of their ears and they have two separate blankets because they fought over the big one.

she falls asleep imaging that there are three girls, just a few feet away. maybe they’re on the floor playing with the ferrets, or in the gray chair scrolling through the pictures of them taken a few hours earlier. maybe he is there, twisting the knobs on her guitar to whatever alternate tuning he has been experimenting with this week.

she wakes up to the sound of her father playing songs she hasn’t heard him play in months, and she wonders who else in this still-foreign house is awake and why Saturday afternoons had to change.

the boys she loves

she was reading a bunch of poems she wrote about him in 7th grade (and, gosh, they were shit), but she was thinking about how nice he is, and how he never makes her feel like just his little sister’s best friend. she’s pretty sure they would’ve never worked out, because he loves the Patriots (only one of many reasons), but they’ve always had some weird bond; and she hopes when he gets married and moves to Colorado that will stay the same. she writes him another poem in the margin of her old journal:come home for Christmas and we’ll be connected in our weird not-biological-siblings way and it will be great

the day that she left he told her to wake him up, and she was nervous because she wasn’t sure what time he had come home (he was still at work when she fell asleep). but she tiptoed into his room at 6am anyway, doing her best to ignore the pile of clothes on the floor, trying not to think that she might never help him hang them up again. she nudged him gently, i’m leaving, and he barely opened his eyes, but he pulled her into his arms, and she wanted to ask him to please never let go. but she had to, she had to go. he buried his face in her neck and whispered i love you and she thought he was almost as close to crying as she was; she thought she was going to burst into tears, but thank God she didn’t. she mumbled love back and held him tighter because it felt like, maybe, between his strength and her not crying they would never have to be apart.

he always held on for too long and that ruined her in ways he’ll never know, but deep down she’s grateful that he was never scared to tell her he loved her, even when she didn’t know what to make of it. and she doesn’t really mind that his car always smells like weed, or that some of the music he plays is nothing but screaming; she doesn’t mind, she likes the way he talks to her about music and poetry, and that he took her seriously, or at least tolerated her she doesn’t know either way, he never dismissed her. five and a half years is a lot. he was never scared to say he loved her, and now when she comes home and he hugs her he can hold on for eternity. he can say i love you as many times as he wants because she’ll be saying it right back. finally, she understands.

© 2016 Anna Gayle “misplacedpens”