'where are you?' calls when i’m 20 minutes out the sun is orange no red burning into my arm out the window and I just got done shaking in a mcdonalds bathroom splashing water trying to remember where I’m going and why and I tend to forget I’m young I have soft bones and milk skin but I think i know what your mother means when she says it’s been too long when she says time passes when she shakes her head and smiles to ward off the reaper. take your time you have tomorrow they all say but my heart beats too fast for me to sleep. it works harder than it needs to I think to make up for my lack of productivity reminding me that I’m here with soft bones and milk skin and a shiny new throb inside of me. I know some people get more done before I even wake up more than I get done in a day but at dawn I smell the firesmoke and remember I have places places places to go it’s all okay because I have time and even if I don’t if it runs out - it’s okay so I start being brave and stop staring at the ceiling until I’m seeing my future in the plaster and start telling people what they mean to me faster before I gracefully remove myself because it’s exhausting to be anything but a phone call whispering sweet words and memories of dusk in the dunes drinking tacate and building people out of sand until the tide comes in and pulls them back to sea

don’t worry about me

i'm reading Big Sur to remember you and maybe a piece of who i used to be. you asked me to turn around, but the summer already has its noises in my ears and the sun already made her mark on my back. i know i stayed a little too long.

i smoke brick weed and feel so high school. you hit the bong in your rich aunt's beach house. i got kicked out of my summer classes and you're going up the mountain for yours. six short months and i'll be back with friends, midnight on the atlantic with our 40s and no shoes. waking up to go to class with a headache for the commute. and you'll be in another continent reading Big Sur in the tall grass, for the second time. you'll meet a girl on a sailboat, tattoo for every border she crossed and freckled by the sun. you'll tell her all about how you think Kerouac would be really boring to talk to but agree with whatever she thinks in the end. i'll be happy and i won't miss it.

the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period

sunrise, sunset. like a bright eyes song that hasn't left my mind since middle school. you smoke a cigarette on the back porch, i stare at the sun.

we rode our bikes to the end of the island and jumped the "no trespassing" sign into the dunes to drink our beers. i laughed because there were only two birds on Bird Island.

the sun was high and so were we. we kissed in the ocean. i got nervous about what the water held and let the waves crash over me to separate us.

i could've stayed longer. i miss the house, i miss the town, i miss the beach. i miss your stories and your laugh but i don't miss your kisses, the hesitant intimacy.

i keep wondering how i can love someone, but never unconditionally.