Lessons From the Kissing Booth

Today was the perihelion, so I gathered up my tin cans and string a sent up a rocket to tell secrets to the sun.

I only told the sun the good secrets, though. I told it about taking off my hat halfway through walking home in a rainstorm, the drops all glittering in the streetlights, and feeling my hair curl on my shoulders. I told it about forgiving you too soon and myself not at all, about a hand that felt as reassuring as the cool side of the pillow after a bad dream. How you showed up like Wile E. Coyote with a suitcase full of black holes and put one on my heart big enough to drive a truck through. How I want to head up to Point No Point with a stack of smiles, a bottle of scotch, and my most enthusiastic friends, and let a few miles of windy coastline blow the sunshine out from under my eyelids.

I told the sun about laughing so hard I could see the tops of my cheeks, about a baby on an airplane that lurched into my arms when I said hello to it. I told it that there are always going to be things under the water that no one has ever seen before because nature always wins. I whispered a few not-out-loud things, my voice vibrating softly all along the string and into space.

I gave the sun the best secrets, because it's an awful long way back around to here again.