I am exhausted and alone. tonight the chlorine in my hair dried in the almost dark as I sat on a diving board surrounded by strangers in nothing but my underwear and insanity. that moment is a piece of lightning in my stomach. later, I bought beer for minors and listened to them chirp and scream and laugh to each other as we sat on blankets in the middle of a golf course. it has been a long time since I have been illegal. or young.

some nights the only question I have left to ask is why you didn’t stay with me. I miss you so much really, I suppose I have to say it because I am so afraid of saying. I miss you terribly. you float through my mind like a little piece of light that I am afraid to let go of. I wish I could share this strangest summer with you. but you are far away and lord knows how little you care for me anymore. I want to make sure you are not lonely, and I would send Hobbes to you but I do not know your address. did you really get a new car? are you sleeping with anyone now? I want to know you again, but even the smallest forms of communication are too much. if you want to come back to me then you must be the one to start. perhaps I have too much pride. or fear. or both, each being one half of the other. when coop curls me into his chest as I cry about my dad on my balcony under oncoming storms I am so grateful because his body is so much like your body. when coop pulls me in and we fall asleep together after too much wine and telling him no and no and no a million times I am grateful because it is so much like sleeping with you. but he is not you, and no one ever is. and I am tired of telling the world I am fine because I am so beautiful and so incredible and so wonderful and Alexis why are you still so hung up on a boy you didn’t love and who didn’t love you? I’m so tired of. you were my best friend and so incredibly fucking singular and no one could understand what existed between the two of us, nor would I ask them to. I don’t even care if you read this. I am not saying this for anyone. I am sad and I am tired and I miss you, and I say this for myself. because I cannot keep lying to the world for the sake of being what they want me to be. I am a woman with an honest heart as wide as an ocean and I have no shores to kiss. that is all.