I’ve never learned how to spell "tomorrow" right the first time. Does it go I before E or you after me when we’re walking home at 4 a.m., drunk and blissful and full of silly, stupid hope. Summer nights like glow worm, like cold grass with my head in your lap, like body full of lightning. Winter mornings like never leave bed, like wool socks, like I have a hard time smiling when it’s dark for 12 hours. The freckles on your shoulders always left me tongue-tied. You're chewing on your lip like first date, age 14. You're chewing on mine like film scene lovers. We were tripping up stairs in a race to locked rooftop fire escapes, kissing in the hallways with nearly-burnt-out lightbulbs. I’ve never learned how to spell tomorrow because you were a tether to my minute-hand heart. There was no tomorrow, only the next moment I could curl into your booming laugh, around your warm arms, against your chest. Holding you felt like getting lost in the woods behind my house when I was young – I somehow always knew where to turn to make it home before dark. You are ocean mouth and backroad gravel voice and hands like brick-and-mortar around the burning church in my chest. Smile crooked like the street I grew up on, barefoot and scarred knees and crying silently in my locked bedroom. I never learned how goodbye echoes. I never learned that love can be past tense. Then you were gone and only kissed me sober because you were too busy falling apart after your fourth whiskey and I was trying to hold your edges together but just kept cutting my fingers. Eyes less like oak trees and more like black ice. Voice like storm cell, like prison break. You screamed less like summer thunder and more like a fox in a trap. A yowl like finish lines, like splinter heart, like don’t touch me anymore. Doors echo when they’re slammed. I learned how to spell tomorrow.
“what goes up” by h.f.j. (via ttwentysix)