Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I dreamed of daffodils, lifting their buttery throats and shouting at the sky, yelling in daffodil so that no one nearby understood their words but only felt their meaning. Screaming in such a way that even the stars drew closer, furrowed their brows, and tilted their heads.

But imagine that we are somewhere else, in a grove of trees stinking of overripe fruit cracked and dripping from their fissures, the heat hanging heavy on your collarbones and a feeling you've never before met curled in the hollow of your throat. In the space behind you the sound of cicadas is rising and the length of your bones is sore and tired, but you are distracted because the stars have come too close and I have run away, reckless, again.

It is all of this that has drawn a shining web around you, that has brought the heavens in for a closer look, that has brought all of the points that Nostradamus secretly predicted would end the world together in one very small, very warm place. And it is only after the world has ended that we might think to gather all of those shouting daffodils in our arms and listen for the messages hidden when they pause to draw breath.