Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I'm just standing here. Holding these plums and wishing they were ripe already, cracked and patched over with slivers of stained glass. You don't get to look through these windows. Just because I say so.

It's only that there are too many things broken. All over. Everywhere. I'm starting to think that the problem is simply that my heart beats in 3/4 time.

Sometimes climbing into a bed that smells of unfamiliar but, moreover, largely unremembered. Unimportant and unremarkable. Because at some point the who of the whole thing matters less than the what, collecting calluses to string together and build a fortress against what I can't even begin to prepare for. All in the name of poking sleeping monsters with sticks, really, to make sure that they're still sleeping and still monsters. Still with the scary sharp teeth. Like the man I read about who spent years in a Stalinist labor camp and, once released, dedicated his life to collecting keys without locks, as though the symbol of what had once trapped him had become what eventually set him free.

And while perhaps it is not the best decision to gather tangible relics of whatever it is that tortures you, I have heard somewhere that in the middle of the storm any port is liable to look like home.