“There’s this boy and he kicks his feet up on your couch in the stickiness of summertime and says, “What the fuck just happened?” and closes his eyes to the idea that he’s so much bigger than this place, this town, these people. He likes the way you come home with nettles in your hands, and in your hair. Once, he picked one out and showed you his eyes and told you that once upon a time they were the color of the sea, but it emptied out into his mother’s grave. you think you’re in love with the things he says, even if they aren’t half as poetic as you make them out to be.
There’s this boy and he’s grown into his hands and out of everything else – clothes, friends, family. You, you think, but don’t say it. His eyes make your chest feel like a warzone. You’re afraid to jinx this tenuous thing you have with him. He says you remind him of the woods, sometimes, when he’s in bed with you and he’s tired and he doesn’t know the difference between what’s coming out of his mouth and what’s going in. He says, “you’re worth more than this.” And you say, “so are you.” And he laughs himself to sleep.
There’s this boy and you hate thinking about how he wrings his hands. How he flinches away when Scott tries to touch him. How his eyes flicker in and out of existence like stars. Your mother used to call him a drowning ocean when she pointed him out to you. He was smaller then, acorn-small with legs that swung like pendulums. Hands like marbles. A deputy father. You think it wasn’t right then, but it is now.
There’s this boy and the first time you kissed him, it was in a bathroom stall at Target and it was the most unromantic thing you’ve ever thought up, but there was a tedious beauty in the way you both couldn’t help yourselves, couldn’t keep your hands from scrabbling under each other’s shirts. A mutual breaking point over the way things were. You think about fires in the summertime and the way he holds your hands and how they shake when you get into your first fight, so badly that you stop yelling at him. You think about how your mother probably knew all those days ago, in the hospital, that you were going to dream of marrying him sometimes, when your mind wandered.
There’s this boy and he lays you down in the forest and kisses the thoughts out of your head, the ghosts out of your mouth. Holds his fingers to your teeth when you shift, brushes over the ridge of your brow. You think he’s too good for you, but again, you don’t say it. Still, after all this time, you feel like hearing the words aloud make them more real. “I’m not scared away that easy, asshole.”
There’s this boy and you think you’re in love with him.”
theproblemwithstardust 