1. “We can date, but keep it a secret” Your chestnut, overly swished bowl-cut hair kept my prepubescent dozen aged eyes intoxicated, and that cracked voice left my heart in the same state after the lifetime I dreamt up stopped a couple hundred weeks too soon- giving us the eternity of two. And when I got my phone, you were the first “New Message Received” spelling out heyyy with 3 y’s. The 1st of these being normal, and the extra two were a sign to me that your two hands were reaching through the screen to pull us back together…they weren’t.
2. You were the longest stretch I’ve ever ran with. You were many months of mixed age kisses as your multi colored hair covered glassed eyes that reflected my lips mouthing the only true “I love you”s I thought I’d ever felt. I let that metro, not floral scented at all, Hollister cologne cling to every piece of fabric relaxed on my too wide curves you deemed “super hot”. We ended in a crying crash, slammed back inconveniently for a weekend with puckered eyes and chapped lips, and imploded with a thought no person should ever have to feel.
3. You were a big fat ‘No’
4. I’m sorry I ruined your first everything. I forced first kisses out of boredom, first furthers on similar principles, and that first ‘I love you’ was a mistranslation of ‘I just like you’ via English-to-Duetch when I wanted to share your interests.
5. I pedestalled you for 104 weeks, gazing distantly at eye level. You weren’t a possibility, so when the “I think you’re pretty” text lit up a phone, my heart forgot to restart and my blood went blue because my breath became shorter than the end result of “us”. I let you be my only well rounded first kiss, filled with the lust that two years of admiration had built up. I let your heart push mine back into my chest after every out beat. You saw my most vulnerable sides, didn’t say a word, and then stood away as emotions dragged makeup with them down inflamed cheeks. For you I conned myself that every bullshit, cliché line you muttered through that damn hell of stubble I agreed to let flourish on that face that constantly rested in the small of my neck, was true. I let you turn hand holds and neck kisses into just hugs goodbye into a final hug into no eye contact into distances of five feet into I thought I was okay but every time I look at you every word I never said balls up like hair in cats’ stomachs and I have to run before I project it onto the ground into now between us those five feet turn to miles into eons, and now all I can think is if I had said ‘I love you’ would you still be holding my hand with clams nipping between eager palms? Would you still wrap yourself around my waist to hold my stomach down because im so lovesick-its a virus? Would you still let me believe that every time you said I was your favorite, it was true?
6.I know it hasn’t ended, or even started yet, but I need to apologize-you’re never going to be my number five.