Give me a cinematic shot. Our bodies drooping over the railing of the overpass, you throwing up in a flowerpot, our skinny hands shaking in perfect synchronization. The music swells, and the look in our eyes— the way we mirror one another, and have been since we first met— our gazes are indistinguishable. Melding, scorching. I don’t love you but I know I could. The angry mob knows our names but they don’t know the way they taste, the way they ricochet from your shower walls. I have learned to love the wreckage. Memorizing the pharmaceutical name versus the street name; not even with intent, simply through exposure. I love the way eyes track me, the way people always just know that I am just a little bit worse than they are. Beauty in the grotesque. Breathing room in my straight jacket. We are perfect because we will never be this reckless, this boisterous, this free, in any other moment. Other than right now. Someday I will stop writing about the bullet wound, the sting of life, the broken mailbox. But youth is inevitably composed of mistakes and learning how to bleed quietly. The realization that you will always keep going. I will not change myself for you, nor will I save myself from you. Nor do I need to be saved. “I am where I am meant to be.” It is a mantra, a prayer. Repeat it and remember it until you are certain that it’s true.
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