When You Have Missed Them For 365 Days
You kiss me in your bed. I tell all of my roommates you are probably the one. And I think maybe you are.
By 
Ari Eastman
May
You kiss me in your bed.
I tell all of my roommates you are probably the one.
And I think maybe you are.
I still do.
July
I see you on your birthday.
I drive over at 3 am because I think you might not be there in the morning.
I may find pieces of you scattered across Sunset Blvd.
You say,
“I need you.”
And I throw on shoes and run,
kiss bleeding knuckles
and let you collapse into me,
broken over another girl.
I kiss your forehead and rub your back.
I do not tell my roommates you are probably the one.
But I think you still are.
Irrationally.
Dirty.
In street corners and things I hide from friends.
I spend the night,
but we do not have sex.
You kiss me deeply,
Do not remember the next morning.
I leave quietly.
August
I think of driving off a cliff.
And I know,
that’s extreme and honest and a thought my mother tells me shouldn’t be so loud,
shouldn’t be so public,
I remind her
if I don’t tell someone,
maybe my foot won’t hit the brakes next time.
December
It is one year since the incident.
I put three candles around me.
I light them,
immediately blow them out.
Feel a little like that’s what happened to me.
Extinguished.
Without a fucking warning.
January
I am beginning to like him.
But not the way I felt for you.
I text you after I sleep with him.
But I remind myself this is good.
This is different.
That not all things start in combustion,
some flames are small to start.
We are the kindling right now and maybe that’s okay.
But he’s still not you.
So while things still sit without labels,
I meet another boy in Los Angeles.
He looks at me the way you did that night I wore the black dress.
I want to ask him if he knows
the way he is looking at me
and that it smells like future and potential and I could kiss him in the bar.
I kiss him in his house.
February
It is Valentine’s Day.
The boy I started to like,
slowly
let the fire build up with every touch,
tells me it isn’t really working.
The boy in Los Angeles doesn’t text back.
I am told he is dating a 19 year old.
And at 23,
that makes me feel like a hag.
I remember that you once said I would look good holding a baby,
which is a fucking weird thing to say.
But I keep hearing you say it.
Over
and over.
It is my lullaby
when I cannot sleep.
March
I do not talk to anyone. I cover myself in blankets and hibernate until people worry. I tell them it’s fine. But I keep looking at my Dad’s urn. I touch it. I wonder what being ash feels like. The ceiling could cave in and I would stay still. Waiting.
May
I tell my best friend how uninterested I am in sex,
with exceptions for fictional characters like Spike.
I am fighting nothingness again,
but then,
there you are.
You appear and everything feels like May 2014.
You are still in my pillowcase,
in the stands of my hair,
a ghost hanging out in my text messages.
I read them until I am nauseated with myself.
All this time.
It’s still you.
It will always
always
be you. 
