now that you're here, 

I'd like to thank you for brown eyes,

because there is no such thing as a warm atlantic.

I hear you when you tell me

that not even the stars are immortal,

but I'm not asking for all your sunday afternoons,

or monday mornings

or friday nights.

I don't need another weekday lover.

but now that you're here,

you with your godless days

and your labyrinth mind

and your stories of the south

I need heavy eyes and the air that makes your lungs sting.

I need kind eyes running across my shoulder blades as you take your seat, 

three chairs south of mine.

I need winter eyes

asking me to come in.

to stay a while.

she likes people who use heavy words, but never sterile ones. 

the kind of lips that taste like worn pages,

and eyes like the Atlantic.

she likes blood moons
and busy hands
and the boys who never bothered to ask her major.

she likes the breaths that sit heavy on his skin,
and the kind of Paris that lives between the walls of high school classrooms.

and I'm sorry darling,

but she never much liked the Pacific.

My dad was stranded in China and then Australia for a few days.

No flights coming into the US.

My mom was ironing and crying and the television was far too loud.

He missed my 5th birthday,

and I refused to open presents until he was home.

At least he came home.

But I emptied more than my share of gas tanks.

I wanted to be good at everything, because when I was 17 I was.

I liked white shirts with collars and jeans with holes but I never liked my skin.

My best friends only spoke to me on Mondays,

I painted high school across their screens and in return they gave me words about next August.

I wrote a lot in my little black book. It sounds cliché but I worry about forgetting. I worry about someday-children being 18 and not knowing whether or not it's okay to love on Tuesdays and how necessary it is to have a friend willing to hate people by proxy. These sort of things are terribly important. 17 I was determined. 18 I was present. 19 (thus far) has a lot of homework and not a lot of empty minutes and she only likes running at night and casual eyes. She still doesn't understand the moon but 19 has a ride to Colorado so it'll be okay.  It'll be okay because I'm not 20.

It'll be okay because I have a little grey book now.