this didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but whatever

Perspiration has begun to create creeks in the creases of my palms; there is a bushel of cranberries on either side of my mouth, and I’m fearful that the CO2 I’m exhaling is laced with Camel Filters. You might think it’d been rumored that he was going to ask me to the prom, based solely on the wave of nerves that manage to swell and crash out of my fingertips… but I couldn’t possibly step out in an elaborate gown to laugh, touch, and play while our high school careers, that were once at one thousand degrees Celsius, become a couple of smoldering embers. But I know that he isn’t asking me to the prom; I know he isn’t asking me to the prom because we are nineteen and twenty.

Like a pair of threadbare, silk pajamas folded well and protected by a blend of wrinkled, cotton fabric I am tender on the inside with him, but nearly put together (as seen on the street) on the outside. While I age I know where the indents of crow’s feet will lie and that smoking gives you cancer. And the clock will tick while we bend and grow with the seasons, but he’ll continue to call me ‘beauitful’ as if it’s my name and not an adjective. We’ll sit together, as we are now, in complete silence and satisfaction; we hold intangible freedom, but have made a greater investment than all of Wall Street in each other.

He has the ability to wave the jaded from my heart; it’s as pure as it ever was while I sit near him, blood pressure at 145/92.