Laura

14

technology is scary, edison was a witch

1
It is 3:01 in the morning and my eyelids are textbooks they weigh too much and explain too heavily who I am. You never study; you complain I study too hard. You read in between my lines, you look into windows, I’m afraid of looking out my curtain at night because I’m afraid to see something staring back at me, is that why I hate taking selfies? I’ve never taken a selfie I didn’t hate. You’ve never taken a selfie I didn’t love. The selfie you say we look the best in is the one where the lights are off you hate the word selfie I hate the words ‘I need to sleep’ but we both say them anyway
2
I texted her saying that this has reached a point where I am thermometer and my mouth tastes like blood. This makes sense in my mind but I never understand the plots to her favorite movies. It’s just a mass of words, like stars in the sky, but these are a million light years away, I am looking at ones that have already died. I told her I used to want to be an astronaut. I don’t want to be an astronaut. I told I want to be. I told her I want to punch walls
3
She said that she loved me. I told her my knuckles hurt.
4
My phone lit up with the message ‘I fucking hate birds. They woke me up again how much trouble do you think I could get in for murdering a bird?’ And I know you would never do it, you make sure I don’t step on slugs when we walk circles around the block and I’m texting boy of the week at 2 am. You would never murder a bird just like I will never stop falling in love.
5
I said the birds didn’t wake me up because I never got to sleep.
6
It’s 5:25 in the morning and I have your twitter pulled up and I’m constantly memorizing the beautiful 140 or less characters that you seem to come up with. On the Sixth of July your ex-boyfriend and I found fireworks and he should really make a twitter. Reading what his brain comes up with on the spot would make me laugh and he said I was never really on the spot so I kissed him.
7
We were lying side by side in bed and you mumbled how you enjoyed the sound of me typing it was rhythmic and you handed me a sprite and I opened it with the comment ‘It’s like I’m snapping its neck and drinking its blood’ and you made sure I knew I lost my goddamn mind and I told her I was finding it in my poetry
8
Somehow our vacation plans match up so we’re away for a week at the same time and we Skype every single. I’ve never complained more about hotel wifi then when our connection was fuzzy. I held up a Hotel Bible to the camera telling her I found the light and hearing her laugh made me finally miss New Jersey. Having a missed Skype call from her was like a sin
9
We were lying side by side in bed and you leaned forward when you saw my white knuckles in my black hair and you love contrast and I told you there are no decent geometry books online and what if I fail again all I can do is fail the school costs $65,554 and it said so on the website, dude, like on the actual website my mom used my college fund to leave my dad do you realize how fucked up that is on like a serious level?
10
She patted me on the back and told me I’d never actually be a failure
11
It was 2:37 in the morning when we sat on the sidewalk facing each other with our friends sleeping on my bed inside. I told you my mom got clearance to interview for six different jobs in six difference locations and I was fine with moving I thrive on change I think that’s why I dye my hair so often. Wait, did you hear that, I finally have an answer for why I dye my hair so often.
12
You were always good at making me stop talking with things like:
‘Wait. You’re moving?’