Blanket Forts
august 2012, curled under covers, motorcycles rumbling outside my window akin to my shivers. humid air inviting monsoon season, slightly damp hair.
72966 your name in numbers, encoded so our parents won't find out. a hushed exchange of five-cent nothings and yet everything, everything.
stealing my brother's music, bluetooth transfers and 1 gigabyte micro-sd cards. your love for rixton's "me and my broken heart" and me waiting, waiting for a text till i drift to sleep.
facebook messages, $23 m1 prepaid packages. your mother's essay of a text telling me to stop texting you, because you never had enough money by mid-month to update her of your whereabouts. red nokia, pink sony ericsson, blackberry. meeting behind stairwells to exchange bounce cheat codes.
3676849 my name in numbers, that night my mother found out and i sat there scared and in tears for reasons i never understood. the last boy ill speak to, wishing me happy birthday every year since. and me struggling to continue the conversation on an unlimited plan.
a decade later and you've made nothing much of yourself, but i still have every note passed around the class. a decade later i have moulding papers in a padlocked box, in my obnoxious orange pen and your ballpoint. i hoard every memory and store every expired relationship in some corner of my mind, scattered with lost conversations only i recall.
june 2018, saved .pdfs of conversations: the only times you were kind to me at 3am when you couldn't fall asleep. my eternalisation of these glitches in your cold personality to reveal some shaving of emotional attachment. communicating in google docs, a collage of thoughts, and you, me. images and poetry and stories and lyrics and just parts of ourselves we wanted to share and yet everything, everything.
things nobody else saw, things nobody else would believe existed. and i saw you, for the way you laughed and loved and the way you pulled me in and let me go. And we never talked again, shattered snow globe.
almost half a decade later and you're perpetually drunk, sleeping with your best friend's boyfriend and still fucked up. but i hide that same document, an encrypted .dmg, of you, me.
