adolescence

By Bethaney C., 17

I never imagined that I would stumble upon someone who I felt and knew that I could fall in love with. I have never genuinely craved the innocence of hands tumbling around each other as if trying to find something, as if he were trying to read my palms, trying to compute the outlines in my hands to create some reaction that could reconcile happiness to my brain. The space between us is never charged, but rather carries the silent and small heartbreak when he remembers that his love is not remedial. I know where home is; I know where the heart is. I know what all these things look like and feel like, yet they do not make me feel whole. I don’t want to love him only for his embrace because I do see him as a person with a name and height and specific weight, and in this way I love him. But he loves me like I am the moon and the sun. To him, I have a thousand names, and, if needed, I am the whole of humanity, and I know that this is not fair.