How You Feel
Your hair flops all over the place. I think the first time we met it was much shorter. Crazy that I can’t bring the precise image to mind anymore, it’s been that long. Cropped on the undersides and long (and still floppy) on the top. You joked about your mullet, and then said you wanted it back. You sort of have the mullet again, but I like it much better now than I did before I knew you.
You know what else? Your hands. Your elbows. That bone that juts out from your thumbs. The way your forearms curve and your shoulders crest over. And also, your legs. So ridiculous, I know. I hate body hair, and you have a lot of it. Because you’re a boy or young man or something. Especially on your legs, you have so much hair. And in your armpits, and on the ridges of your face when you don’t shave in the morning, and a dusting over your knuckles, and your ankles, and and and and. Why do I like it so much on you when I hate it on everyone else? It’s hair for heaven’s sake.
Did I mention your eyes? I didn’t, I know I didn’t. Never to you, at least. They’re blue, but also gray, which is just so typical. I never thought I’d find myself trying to describe how someone’s eyes change colors, but yours do. They’re especially pretty when they’re sort of gray and I can’t remember what color the sky is and your hair is falling into your eyes, and oh you’re so pretty.
I’m fairly sure you’ve had the same backpack since freshman year, which makes me feel warm. Why? I don’t know; I want to hold it for you when you’re reaching into your locker, and I want you to kiss me on the cheek when I hand it back. Your friends would groan, my friends would groan. A side note: I’ve never met your friends, and you’ve never met mine. I think about that. Sometimes. All the time. Never.
I should add that you’re taller than I am. By a good amount. I like that so much. I like that your voice is sweet and low and sexy to only me, and that you had to ask my name three times but never called me by it. And your legs…. I have to mention them again because I’ve just remembered how pasty they are above your knees, and that makes me think of baseball because you play it even though it has nothing to do with your pasty thighs. And when I think of baseball I think of the pictures I sometimes stalk on Instagram these days, and I think of the afternoon it was raining and I went to your baseball game because you’d asked me too. I only stayed for the first part (until after I’d seen you play) and then my best friend asked me why the hell we’d gone to a high school baseball game in the rain when we both knew that I hated all sports, especially the high school ones.
I think it’s weird how much I like your legs. I only bring it up again because the memory of you talking about your shin splints just came to me so clearly that I nearly blacked out from the force of it. We met in a gym class, which I think is the funniest part of it. It’s funny for reasons I can hardly explain, but we only really became friends because you decided to talk to me one day in this class. And during this class we ran. And you ran with me. You’re faster than me of course, but I’m fast enough all things considered, and you kept pace with me and talked. I was so out of breath, but you talked and talked and I hummed along to the sound of your feet on the pavement. After, you sat down right in front of me and showed me your shins (which were covered in hair) because you had shin splints and some other day I told you to wear tennis shoes and you refused because you were set on your checkered Vans. Unofficially, I think I’m done talking about your legs.
My friends call me thirsty. I suppose they’re right because although I’m still in love with you, I have no problem giggling about a multitude of other boys who I’ve talked to maybe twice, or possibly never. This could have something to do with the fact that you stopped talking to me approximately seven months ago with no explanation and senior boys keep poking me until I smile at them. I laugh and I scroll and I flirt poorly with other boys but if any of them ever asked me out I would say no because how could I go on a date with a boy I thought was cute when the boy I think is wonderful won’t even look at me? I wouldn’t. I’m not that cruel. Or maybe I am and I’m just waiting for one of those senior boys to ask me out.
So. What do I say now? How do I describe how my stomach hurts and how writing about you will never be enough. Each time I think I’ve gotten over you, you come back like a broken semi-truck sweeping around the other side to catch me unawares. How do I say to you that I love you that I want you that I hope you’re lost without me that I think you’re happy that I wish I wish I wish. I can’t say it because you don’t look at me, and you haven’t texted me since my Instagram account got hacked, and I have no idea if I ever cross your mind.
It’s sick because we go to such a small school and you pop up every where I go. First it’s your orange truck, and then it’s that stupid backpack, and then it’s you during spirit week in a cowboy hat and a pair of denim shorts so short the whole world can see your pasty legs and I want nothing more than to slam you up against a wall. You have a thing for cowboys. You played a video game all summer that you couldn’t stop texting me about. I don’t know anything about video games (and you know everything about them) but this one made you a cowboy and it was your favorite thing in the world until you finished it. Doesn’t that make you sick? Sick that I remember that?
So really, there’s no way to forget about you. It’s you and me and the 500 other idiots that go to our school and I can’t not see you. Every time I’m done, you’re just getting started again. Every time I look to you, your eyes are elsewhere. Every time you turn to me, I’m just looking away.
There is no avoidance. No stopping the ache in my fingers and my mouth and my brain and my stomach, and god I miss you. I miss you because you were my best friend. Because you were always kind to me when I was in a place where the meanest one around was myself. You made me laugh when melancholy stole my attention. You made my hormones pick up in some inexplicable show of unfairness.
I miss you.
I can’t say it enough to make it mean how much it does.
I can’t stop thinking about you.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I try, and I can’t. I don’t try, and I can’t.
I want, I wish. How do I stop this thing in me that wishes you were gone? How do I keep my focus on my own heart, and not on yours, and wishing you wouldn’t leave?
Because you are. It’s college for you next year, and I’ll be moving to a new school. Mostly because I have barely any friends at the school I’ve now been at for five years, and you were my last. Partly because this is a small school and I see you in everything and everyone, and I want to stop seeing you. Because maybe then.
Maybe then in the school I start fresh in the fall. Maybe then when I can rest knowing you’re not living two minutes by car away from me. Maybe then when I can delete the messages, the texts, the memories.
Maybe then I can forget about you.
And truly. I hope I will.
