you're too young & eager to love

I can't say really why I wrote this.
It's mostly fluff. And it made me feel arrogant.




Maybe they meet at a coffee shop while she orders one of those sweet white chocolate mochas, unintentionally slamming her shoulder into the tall brunette’s side. She’ll flash a smile and a surprisingly genuine apology, and Drey will buy her drink. Maybe it’s on a street, and she asks for a cigarette – all fluttering hands and no lighter in her purse, so she’ll ask for that too. Or it could be while Drey’s at work, and she shows up to dance. There’s always a crowd undulating beneath the multi-colored lights, so maybe it’s how the red in her hair flashes bright – glaring like the bangles on her arm. She’s got that gypsy style of dancing, the rhythm reflecting in the movement of her hips, in the length of her outstretched arms and the way she twists her wrists to the beat.

It doesn’t much matter how, not after it’s happened.



She likes Drey’s beauty marks, the speckles like constellations she can trace on a sky of skin. Drey likes the mole in her left ear, the spot that people – at a distance – often confuse for a piercing. They wear similar perfumes, share the same body lotion – the deep scents mingled with hints of fig or plum or sandalwood. The girl, she’s jealous of Drey’s long hair, of her ability to wear just about any article of clothing ever made, and how she rolls a joint in under fifteen seconds. But she likes the feel of her laugh against her throat in the middle of the night, and how Drey rarely steals the blankets.



She tapes poems to the mirrors. Writes messages in neutral colored lipstick. She sprays perfume on the pillows so that after she’s left for work, Drey can still smell her. She’s a subtly noticeable romantic. So, Drey buys her the first edition books she wants (and keeps a list of on the refrigerator, next to a list of coming soon movies and a list of topics she still has to Google). She finds the delicate antique style jewelry the girl favors. Keeps pistachio ice cream in stock for when she has a craving.



They make their own schedule. She sleeps in late and stays up early, makes dinner for them at three in the morning. Drey lets her reinvent all the musical numbers she ever disagreed with, helps her with the choreography and a replacement move for jazz hands. They smoke cigarettes by open windows, and she brings home potted flowers for the garden on the little iron balcony.

What they don’t do is talk about time and schedules and who needs who. They don’t mention predicaments or plausibility or levels of devotions, because those are the types of conversations that make her throat constrict. The type of heaviness that weighs on her shoulders, pulls her begrudgingly downward. Drey doesn’t budge or push or force; she waits, patient, and the girl forgets to say thank you with words. Her feelings manifest in actions, in the way the force of her loyalty burns.



She gets restless from time to time. An anxious energy that wrestles with the air around her, makes her pull away and devote herself to old books. She has the type of silence that can be intimidating, the type of independence that people crave. Her ability to be self-sufficient is astounding and hurtful. A sort of selfishness on her part, caught in the length of her eyelashes or the chipped polish on her nails. It moves in with the winter months, when the heaviness of her insides emerges, when she talks of mothers and sisters and the fear of future diagnoses. Drey pours her vodka over ice and listens, a lengthy shadow that is comforting rather than imposing.



They fight over who should pay the check for dinner, the tickets to the movie, the electric bill. They fight over whether or not it’s appropriate to keep in contact with past loves. They fight over responsibilities and the mess that always seems to be in the hallway and how she forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste. They agree on horror films and art designs and expensive sheets. They agree on techno music and how redheads can be ridiculously attractive and how Marlboro is really the best brand of cigarettes. They agree on freedom and being unconfined and how running with an equal feels.