high-school girlcrushed

once again i see you laying back on my pillows like you belong there more than me maybe you do, i think you do. i think it’s best when we’re together 

your hair is splayed out, dark curls, a sort of halo and a warning i repeatedly fail to take i swear my heart bounces from my chest when you ask me to hold your hand i lay beside you and leave space because touching you seems sacred and i refuse to believe i am worthy. eventually i sling my arm around your waist and though i’m not quite holding you i really do never want to let go. 

thirty minutes pass. it felt as if it were a day. it felt as if it was never long enough. it will never be long enough, and i found that although i have a fierce love for music the sound of your peaceful sleepy inhales is far more dulcet to me. i think of you talking, you laughing, you telling me you love me too. 

i discover myself through you, and when we’re exchanging 

fantasies, 

whatever fantasies two suburban, sixteen-year-old closet lesbians can conjure up, there’s nothing unorthodox about it. 

nothing dirty about wanting what you can’t have. 

you know while you were asleep, i was stationed at a typewriter in my hippocampus, memorizing the sun’s kiss to your lionsmane and filling my head with words so my buzzing wouldn’t disturb your sleep. 

my poem then was better. and i won’t get those words back, but i can try. i can try again. you’re still asleep, anyhow. 

though, my poem now is making me remember. you. you. you. how to tell you you are loved this much without burning myself on matches i shouldn’t be playing with. risky business, loving with a lava heart. 

yes, i know well your love isn’t for me 

but mine is for you, all of it 

and three years later, when we’ve remained each other’s closest, best friend, when we’ve walked our separate ways, it will be a pleasure to have been chasing you for my teenage years. it

was an honor to love you privately, and a joy to call you my first love. my first friend. my first lighthouse. 

for here i am, girlcrushed and grown up for it. stripped 

naked at the heart but smiling wide and fulfilled. 

there you are, curls nipped at the bud, as clever as once enchanted me, finding your way, too. i am the happiest i’ve ever been to be by your side as we grow up. we were girls together so that we could be so much more, you and i.