West Coast

I can't stop hurting myself. worrying about when the clock strikes 12, when the sun will catch our blankets on fire, when the rug will be ripped from under my feet. losing myself and seeing my inner child through your round chestnut brown eyes, feeling like someone is playing a sick joke on me. giving me you. to think that I am being held by you without a cost. not knowing when our time is up, or when you'll decide to go, or when I might get tired of waiting for this eventual fate, and run away as far as your doe eyes can't reach.

you remind me of yellow rain shooting down and bursting against the windshield, and dark brown lights in a desert orange tunnel. like speeding through a voicemail of the happy birthday song with my dad singing, or running so fast your surroundings are melting into each other, the way our fire pit would burn marshmallows while we listened to music that was popular in the 80s. you remind me of that feeling I got in my throat when I asked him to come out of his room. the feeling of knowing at 6 years old that he'd rather stitch his lips to the top of a beer bottle as if it was a brand new instrument he knew how to play by ear. I stayed up for nights trying to figure out why I felt so empty, just wanting someone to love me, to watch cartoons with me and show me an old song I won't appreciate until I'm older on the radio. to cook me breakfast with eggs and slices of hot dogs and wear an apron for the comical distraction from a hangover. but they fall asleep with the tv on because they can't bear silence, or the thoughts would come creeping in like spiders in an empty corner. maybe someone would try to listen close enough so maybe they could play me by ear.

you remind me of the dry heat blowing in my face at 3am in the jack-in-the-box parking lot. you remind me of the smell of rain in the dirt, how much it smelled like home. it smelled like clean crisp sheets and orange juice and night tubs of vanilla ice cream. the way I felt at Christmas time when all 50 of my family members came and shared Mexican food and the presents were stacked on top of another like eccentrically wrapped boxes. none of the wrapping paper looked the same and the colors made me feel warm.

you are the sound of a dusty record playing the same line over and over again, but they are my favorite lyrics, so I don't mind a bit. you're every fluffy plump chicken skipping across the backyard that is covered in praying angel and mother Mary statues, every bright pink rose I can fit in my pupil view outside of my grandmother's house. the grandmother I cried about when she died and I was 7. before I learned that she berated my mother for years and I resented the tears I wasted on her soul. you are the beautiful feelings, the good memories, right before I look for the bad ones, right before I dig for a hole. you are the feeling of the sunrise through my bedroom window when I stayed up all night on accident already.

you remind me of the smell of a sleek blue suitcase and the sound of the slow zip. you are the arms that wrap all the way around me right before the security checkpoint. the very safe feeling with that underlying pain in my tight chest. the realization that in 10 minutes I'll be boarding this flight and I miss you already, I promise to call you everyday if you answer, hopefully I'll make it for summer this year, but if not 12 more months will go by fast, I love you this much. you're the feeling of safety and also that burning pain I feel in my eyes as we wave goodbye to my dad and my brother and they smile wide with their teeth so that I won't cry. you're the heart pounding between my ribs as the dark orange sky blurs together with my tears when I can't stop imagining them waving, smiling with ribbons of glass colored teardrops tied together, without knowing exactly the next time I can see them again. but just knowing I love them so, so, so much.

that feeling of never knowing when the best and most beautiful memories will be burned at the edges. the short clips that replay in the crystal ball that is my brain take place in the home where I craved love the most, and somehow as a child, even though I only spent summers in this home, this is how I remember it. and even though I have only spent about a year in your arms, you feel like home to me. like jumping high on a trampoline and friction burning my knees against the mat. smelling the salt water air and holding my little fairy cactus in my bedroom and kissing each prickly arm, wishing that the Atlantic ocean would somehow shrivel up and I'd be surrounded by Sienna dust again, and every palm tree was a tall saguaro cactus waving its giant limbs, sprouting from the dark ground that is my home. waving as if to say, I miss you already, I promise to call you everyday if you answer, hopefully I'll make it for summer this year, but if not 12 more months will go by fast, I love you this much.

that's how I feel about you