Dear boy whose ears are ticklish,
You are sensitive to the way I am sensitively
Nibbling on your neck and kissing your stubbly cheek
Covered in little hairs, little red hairs
I am alone sitting in my mother’s car remembering
The moment you changed in my mind into something different
The same moment that you became one of those boys,
Those boys that cheat on their girlfriends
And you turned me into stardust
I burst at the seams of my slipping sanity
I was ripped into shreds by the way you kissed my nose
And the shy way you bit my lip the first time we kissed.

Dear boy who makes unnecessary noises,
I had forgotten how it feels to causally hold hands on a couch in the dark
Until there was you letting me make you scratch my back and letting me
Make you a villain while I remain some type of hero,
Or maybe more like heroin
I have burnt the bridges that led me into your veins
I have burnt the highways that led me into your heart
I made us star-crossed if only in my mind’s eye
I made us tragic if only in the flower petals I’d pluck
I have been left alone sitting on the Ferris wheel
Looking to the top then to the bottom
Convincing the invisible you that
It’s okay to conquer this fear.

Dear boy with the navy blue hat that you let me steal,
We are grasping too tightly to something that was never there
To the medicine in the cabinet that I have already taken
To the knife in your bedroom that you have already hidden
We are telling each other tales of times in the past
Where we wished we were together and we were home at last
On that swing below our tree house, lost in Virginia woods,
You’d look at me and tell me to shut up,
Just carry on;
Just carry on.

Dear boy who gets in bendy straw moods,
You are the new way I collect memories
Like sea shells and butterflies
Like pixie dust spilling from behind my eyes
I am starting to realize this is without remedy
When I wake up you won’t beg me to be alive,
You won’t kiss my forehead when it means goodbye
And that little girl we call Elsey in our daydreams
Won’t be sitting atop my lap reciting her alphabet
You will let me down in your different way
Because the other boys who want to call me baby
Aren’t quite like you
You are the one who didn’t want anything to do with me
But got me baking pumpkins pies and shaving my legs
Got me acting like a woman
You are the one that saved me from a dip I wasn’t ready to take.

Dear boy who once smelt like me,
You will wake up one Saturday morning and
There will not be me playing video games under your mostly denim comforter
I will be sitting on top of the desk at that far away place I will now call home
You will be a little kid, still in high school
And I will have grown those wings I have always dreamt of
You will not be my fondest memory, or my biggest regret
And on that morning, you won’t even realize it’s me that’s missing
You won’t realize that you could have liked me;
Hell, you could have loved me.