VaCuUm

Maybe I sat in class too long, because even words are getting old.

There is no good way to tell you I’m leaving, but maybe even then, you wouldn’t know what I said.  Je ne sais pas? 

I wandered around our apartment and wondered if I should take a picture.  Homes are only solid if you stay in them.  I’ve got 18 tick marks on my wrist, with two states and people lost along the way.  It wasn’t a massacre, but it was bloody just the same.  Is it ever kind when you pick up and go? 

I didn’t get homesick until I went home.  It was seeing how the wall paper was replaced and the smile on the face of my mother made me wonder if I was an addition or a rendition.  I’m not the newest version, not the 9.1 updated on her Iphone.  My phone’s been broken, but they wouldn’t have called anyway. 

I call when I can.  Isn’t that what a college kid is supposed to do?  But maybe I’m the mother, waiting for someone to call and the rest is just undiscovered.  I guess I thought that moving out would prove a point.  I didn’t think it would mean moving on. 

So, I’ll waste more time on Etsy.  Heaven knows, I should be writing my paper instead of self-destructing.  I don’t have enough bills to wipe my tears.  We had a cleaning inspection and I forgot to put my heart in the drawer.  It’s probably left on the floor from when I threw it there last night.  If we fail, I’ll tell them I couldn’t pick up the pieces, because they’re too spread out.

Use a vacuum, they’d say. 

I checked the bag.  It’s already filled with the bullshit I found and threw under my bed.  My roommate told me to clean it up.

If there was a vacuum to clean up sorrow, then hell, I’d save up my money and expedite it to me.  Two days, at minimum.  I could guarantee a pass and a better roommate.  Because we can hang up polaroids and stay up until 4 am.  We could gain 10 pounds and take a dance class to work it off.  We can skip every class at least once a week and fail one of the ones we actually liked. 

But my heart is bruised.  Is it possible to scar from a distance?  I didn’t want you to move on without me, but I guess you have your own cleaning to do.         

Letter To One: High School Hellcat

Dearest High School Hellcat, 

It's been half a year.  Six months, just shy of seven. Do you know that?  Do you realize that?  Do you care about that?  I haven't seen you since the day of our graduation, at least I don't think so.  You left over the summer and I left when you returned.  And then you left again.  Life moves like the tide I would suppose, except instead of moving backward as evenly as forward, the tide only moves up the sand.  I wrote a couple songs and called it good.  It, you ask?  It's a sort of drawer in my heart with things I filled that had to do with you.  I called it good and shut it.  I even thought I locked it. 

There are a lot of things I remember.  Maybe I conjured up some and maybe some were real.  Who knows, with the mind always playing tricks on us.  I used to write you letters I'd never send, but they always sounded so angry with you.  So mad that you hadn't loved me back, or so hurt that you weren't what I thought you were.  But I'm not mad anymore.  I probably understand now, at least more so than I did then.  

I don't think of you as often as I did.  Senior year was hell because I tried (and failed) to not think of you.  But you had always been there, just a constant presence in my head like a memory I couldn't, and wouldn't escape from.  There are passing moments when I remember the way I liked your hair when it was long or how around this time last year, you were Bender, running through the halls to see me with your fist in the air.  I don't remember loving you more than I did then. 

But this is all past tense, isn't it?  Damn, the past was tense.  I wasn't the girl I am now.  I think you'd like this version better.  The new 9.0.2 update or something.  

The minute high school ended, I was happier.  I got music going, I met someone else.  Zane Perry Callahan is quite the character and I actually think you'd get along swell.  He can make just about anyone laugh and has a beard that's overly impressive.  And I love him.  He's what I've needed, I suppose. 

Tonight, I looked up on the Internet how long it takes for the average human to fall asleep.  I can't fall asleep in seven minutes, but that is what it said.  I don't think I've done that since I was five years old without a care in the world or Bat Manors to listen to.  That's why tonight, I thought about you.

I listened to Bat Manors all day.  I love them and I think I am going to buy Literally Weird in vinyl.  I'd like the sound of them on my record player throughout the apartment.  Maybe if we ever get the chance, we could listen to it together.  

I still don't understand a lot of things.  I used to be this girl with good intentions, but that changed with the girl out of high school.  I don't have bad intentions now, or maybe I do, but I don't know where God is or whether or not He will hear me if I asked for help.  I've made mistakes, although I see them as blessings in disguise.  I don't believe that if there is a God, that He would punish you for the way you see the world.  And right now, I see it as clear.  

When I loved you, it was anything but.  

I still have regrets; things I should've told you.  Things I shouldn't have said.  I wished that I could've moved on sooner so that we could've been friends, like the type that stay in touch after high school.  I miss having you as my friend for one thing.  I miss a lot of things.  

But they're just things.  And the ache in my chest I had whenever I saw you in the halls can still be felt sometimes.  I guess loving you was the purest form of pain I'd ever felt.  It's distinctive and can be located through crowds, but only by me.  Tonight, I can feel it.  Acute as ever, the ache in my chest.  It made me worry for a moment that I still had feelings for you.  

Of course I do.  According to The Notebook, no one ever truly forgets their first love.  

And you were mine.  So thank you.  I'm a woman now, with bad intentions and a sloppy love life that isn't all due to you.  And I love it.  Every chaotic second and brutal minute, I am happy now with who I am.  Flaws and breakage, all the things they would warn me about in high school; how college was the only way to make a life for yourself....I couldn't be happier mistaking my way through it all.  

Gentry

P.S--I once almost bought you a Slow Club vinyl.  

P.P.S--I almost did today and sent it anonymously until I realized I have to ask someone for your address and they might tell you.  

P.P.P.S--I still might buy it.