i am leaving.

I realize it is one in the morning, that I have a test tomorrow, and that Dance Marathon is this weekend. I don't care.

I'm standing at a party, I am staring at the sky, I am by myself. I see familiar faces, I see a girl kiss a boy's forearm. I think I don't want that. I think I want to be with someone who will tell me all the ways I am wrong. I think I want to be with someone who can finally clarify the concept of différance and who corrects me when I mispronounce "Jacques Derrida."

I remember someone. He is close in proximity but too far away to speak to anymore. He used to smell like soap. When he would hug me and my face was pressed to his chest, I would inhale deeply. It smelled like grocery store and living life simply. He was so tall I had to stand on my tip-toes when we kissed. I liked that, the imbalance, the uncertainty. In the mornings, he used to invite me over before work. Come by, lie next to me, he said. We did this once, talking about how we should do it every day. You look beautiful, he said. I swallowed these words. They were true. Our relationship, when I think of it now, reminds me of spring. I used to walk the four blocks to his apartment where he would be writing and Beck or the Flaming Lips or the Talking Heads would be playing so loud I could hear it from beyond the sidewalk. We would whisper thoughts on his back porch and wash his car in the heat of April in Los Angeles. I wonder how I came to be so cruel after how regenerative our time together was. I wonder how I came to give a shit about Brian after that, after how healthy I had been. Come over in the morning, he said. I did. I fell asleep on his chest before work, with my makeup done and my hair up. I fell asleep, inhaling that smell of soap, wiping my slate clean.