Well, let me tell you something, you don't have to be beautiful. Something always brings me back to you.

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There’s a boy, the same one, maybe, who asked her about the cigarettes. She lets him take her out for a drink, he makes her laugh, & she teaches him how to cook & how to be really free. Sometimes, she lets him kiss her goodnight. She lets his fingers roll up her back, kisses in her hair & against the backs of her hands.

& i'd chalk it all up to young love
but darling we are older now,
much older than we ever intended to be.

She is all nerves, tumbling hair, smooth skin, ragged breathing. The lights are off, but headlights break through the window and across her face. She is like some wild, timid creature.

& she looks at him & she wonders how he didn’t know?

I cannot quite catch my breath, the world is glorious. Wonderful. Sometimes it hurts more than it should, but always, it is wonderful.

I started smoking roll ups after you left, because it was something that reminded me of you.

Now I’ve met a different boy who tells me that one of the things he loves about me is those cigarettes. He is falling in love with the marks that you left behind.

hold my hand a while,
tell me fanciful tales about far off lands,
walk me home at 3am.

& don't leave me.
please, don't leave me behind.

We lie close together, listening to sirens & fireworks and the slow tick tick of the clock in the hall.

They sit together in the gathering dark. She lays her head against his chest & her heart breathes and whispers. Small stories escape from her skin and hang in the air around them. Stories which will not travel beyond this room, beyond him, beyond here & now.

Some days she cannot catch her breath.