TrainWrite

The B-sides

1.

I often tell people that I don’t know what I want but I’m lying.

I know what I want but I’m scared

that you’ll look at me like I am hot cider

in the summertime.

2.

I want to stop talking about the weather

and speaking in the language of winds

that lap the sides of our faces like a wet dog.

I want to take the stars down from their shelves in the sky

so you can look at them closely.

Let me show you how love dies.

3.

The day we touched knees on a brick wall for the last time

I wanted to be a wrecking ball so that you couldn’t tell me no.

Or at the very least, I couldn’t listen.

4.

I want release from the hummingbirds that have been stuck in my throat since I forgot how to fountain dance.

I want you to help me to remember.

Make me a mixtape.

5.

I want you to bring your orchestra of friends.

Make them sing like a choir of butterflies.

Shove them into your stomach.

Record this sound as track one on the mixtape.

Find the nearest rooftop and tell me you don’t miss me.

Make words act like comfort and get 1 a.m. drunk while writing out the lines to your 3 a.m. regret.

Set this as track two of the mixtape.

Let the rest be white noise and grimaces.

6.

Record the sound of a memory:

Bridges to feet.

Toe to toe.

As the rain struck my face, tapping out a love note in Morse code,

you brushed my bangs out of my face.

You told me that I had a beauty that cut through the darkness.

You laughed at the way my bangs fell back down into my eyes and told me I should really stop cutting my own hair.

You offered up your arms like scissors and sliced right through me.

Put it on the B sides.

7.

I put my sweater in the dryer.

The green one,

with the hole on the shoulder

that I got from the Salvation Army.

I didn’t want to wash it.

It still smelled like your bed sheets

from the time you slept with it

wrapped around your throat.

It’s warm like hot cider in the summertime.

8.

I made a stencil replica of the tattoo

on your shoulder blade.

I graffitied it onto the hubcap of every car that lined my street.

I watched the black spray paint drip into the road and disappear.

So it goes…

9.

Remember when you told me that you wanted a picket fence with me?

I laughed then, but since that moment, I’ve been collecting two by fours.

I also found a reputable soul collector.

He seems like a pretty nice guy.

10.

I listened to your mixtape today.

Track two was missing.