Hey look, I added the word "burrito."

The days are too long and I know that sort of means I’m doing something right, but as soon as I start filling them they will disappear into weeks and months again. I’ve been too hung up on time for too long and it just keeps getting bigger. It has been sunny and I have been trying to eat well so that my body will be fed well so that everything will work better, like my brain and my lungs. And I’ve been going to yoga classes, which makes my whole body sore, which reminds me that I am here.

I’ve decided to replace boys with vegetables and yoga classes. It’s kind of like when I decided to replace feelings with cigarettes and malt liquor, except more P.C.

internet: always the most appropriate place for melodrama and secrets

We were standing outside of the show and not saying much of anything when he jerked his head in the direction of anywhere else and asked if I wanted to leave. And I guess this is why I’ve come to know him like I have, why the most comfortable place for me to be is out in the cold with him, smoking his menthols. We are both the kind of people who want to leave. And so I said yeah, let’s go. 

There are two ways of telling secrets. There are the kind you announce, the kind you preface, the kind that are dramatic in themselves and there’s no question as to their significance. And then there are the ones you just let slip out when the time is right, without ceremony, without acknowledgement that they are anything more than just words filling up empty space. And when you tell him you don’t like to say goodbye he doesn’t know it’s something you’ve never said aloud before. That he is getting a truth about yourself that you’ve never given. That he is the only person alive on this entire planet who, the next time you disappear, might know why. 

But he says it’s easy. You just go back inside, maybe you wave, and then you’re out. So I follow him inside and he is quick and efficient, maybe he waves, and we’re out again. 

He leaves in the middle of the night and it’s revealed to me casually over coffee the next morning by someone who has never laid awake next to him at 5am listening to what always sounds like his last breath. They got a text that said goodbyes are hard, but I guess he knew I already know that. Or maybe not. Maybe I just didn’t occur to him. I don’t think he has ever laid awake listening to me breathe because he is always the first one asleep and I am always the first one awake, drinking coffee at his kitchen table and wondering whether I should leave. Or wrapped in his blankets with my eyes squeezed shut while he pulls on the same pair of jeans he wears every day. 

I’m not sure if it all became a habit or if I was just getting what I wanted. I’m not sure what in me is always wanting, is never exactly satisfied, is always wishing for more or less or anything different. I’m not sure how it all appears from the outside. I’m not sure who he thought he was walking away from that show with that night and I’m not sure I know either. I’m not sure whether I am a creep, thinking about all of this in the afternoons, when maybe all he was ever giving me was something a little more comfortable than the couch. 

And I’m not sure he knows the way his voice changes when he turns out the light. I’m not sure he knows I notice the places his eyes go, the things that make his face fall. I tried my best to say what I could, but my best is never good enough, never even comes close, and eventually I am always out of chances.

A couple days later I got a text from him in the dark, in the rain, waiting for a bus with another boy I am always saying goodbye to. He told me where he was and that’s it. 

Crime pays.