it’s been forever i know
since i was the tiniest of presences in your life
now i’m certainly less than a memory
a shadow of a bed you once slept in
i’m okay with that
but do you remember the time
you had gone out after some fight with one of the guys
i found you on the rocks
and you said you weren’t crying
even as your sleeve lay dark and sagging
maybe that was the last time i really liked myself
the idea that i could be everyone and no one at once
knowing you like the moss underneath our backs
or the grooves inside my palm
i was an enigma
the most fascinating abstraction you’d ever seen
a picasso, maybe
and you didn’t understand why
i always hid behind my own edges
shifting color outside your gaze
when you tried to teach me to smoke
i wheezed
my cheeks warming with your laughter
it was pretty funny
pretending like i felt something
enough to give you satisfaction
i probably had too much anyway
you left
kissed me goodnight
when the waves stopped crashing and the birds went silent
i fell from the sky
through the ground
colliding with your echo
and that was it
but if i wasn’t a goddamn coward
intent on being disposable
a plague of my own infliction
who knows where i might have slept
with your breath on my neck
for eons i wondered
a naive fantasy
thinks the wiser part of me
to fill in the gaps of someone
less real than a ghost
because those moments were distinct
to me alone
you marveled at your own creation
i guess only now i really get it
that we weren’t in the same place after all
i was a circle and you were a line
of a different plane
our togetherness
infinitesimal
Ben Carpenter is a high school senior from eastern Massachusetts. He enjoys crossword puzzles, listening to music, and utilizing public transportation. At the moment, his favorite novels are The Bell Jar and The Kite Runner. He plans to study mathematics when he begins college next year, and finds the number seventeen extraordinarily fascinating.