breaking spring

It's 3:03am and you forgot to console me, but I reread the letter you wrote and now I know.

I forgot to love it the first time.

We started writing a novel on March 29 at 11:19pm, sometime after the fear of 11:11 and 11:12 caught up to our lungs 

and the movie we didn't watch actually got interesting.  

Your Grooveshark is still up on my laptop, 

the songs that are yours despite who sang and wrote them.

The sun didn't feel as delicious as it tasted. 

And I've been listening to The Village soundtrack since 8th grade, always wondering what the movie was about, 

so the nonverbal bucket list we haven't created is being checked off every hour.

(ever since we broke spring and went right to summer)

Thanks for spilling me on the dirt. I mean it. 

The burns on my legs will make for summer scars and it was just the beginning of Things I Fall Off Of.

I'm sorry you were too busy with sore hands and steep rocks to see 

the way the trees bent over each other on that mountain we climbed. 

You were keeping us safe while I watched summer leaves sprout from snow piles 

and felt us roll down the dirt, lost somewhere under a sun that hates our skin 

but loves our spirits.

I imagined painting everything, even the rain. 

Even though it didn't rain.

The way you climbed up that tree with me, steering between almost-blossoms 

so that we could stand over the shadows that looked like a mess of wires.

I wanted to think about New York up there, but my brain emptied like a cargo ship in the harbor, 

so all I thought about was the color of your shirt and the next step I'd make 

that would keep me 12 feet from the ground.

I'll never stop climbing trees anyway.

Tonight my mom fell in love with my prom dress.

I don't know how or why, but she saw it like I did and cracked a half-smile.

The way our hands felt on April 11 and how his felt and her shoulder found his head 

and the way the volume cranked and we covered our ears as though that turned it down. 

I suppose this is an ode to the laugh lines we gained over burnt marshmallows and helmets 

and the smell of gasoline compared to diesel fuel.  

Maybe it's just an anthem for the 6,570 days you've lived 

and the 35 of those that I've felt.

Perhaps this is nothing but a thank you letter doused in the wiry thoughts of a teenage girl 

whose heart hasn't slept for 35 days. 

And we only ever talk about our minds and our hands, 

so consider this an anthem from the heart.

This heart has never skipped more beats than these last 35 days.

This heart has never smiled for anyone else's birthday candles,

or dropped for anyone else's anger,

or felt so sorry for the one person who begs it not to be.

We forgot to talk about our hearts.

Maybe because they've been talking in a way we couldn't for the past 35 days.