I'll Give You the Sun

“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.”
“So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”

It occurs to me that Jude does this too, changes who she is depending on who she’s with. They’re like toads changing their skin color. How come I’m always just me?

remind myself some girls deserve to be alone.

Rain in December brings with it an unforeseen funeral
(It rained most of the December before she died.)

The assignment was to do another self-portrait. I went abstract, as in: blob. Degas had dancers, I have blobs. Broken, glued-together blobs. This is my eighth.

I don’t say, “And you used to make art and like boys and talk to horses and pull the moon through the window for my birthday present.”

I don’t say, “And you used to make art and like boys and talk to horses and pull the moon through the window for my birthday present.”

I don’t say, “And you used to make art and like boys and talk to horses and pull the moon through the window for my birthday present.”

“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.”

“So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”

He still won’t meet my eyes.

“Suits you.”

I want to kick him in the head.

Instead, I let the wind at my back scoop me up and toss me over the cliff into the sea.

“Gotta bounce,” I say, remembering that’s what I heard someone say to someone sometime somewhere, at school or maybe it was on TV, or in a movie, probably not even from this decade, but who cares, all I know is I have to get away before I evaporate or crumple or cry. I think for a hopeful moment that Brian might follow me across the street but he just says, “Later.”

My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.

Because I imagined it. Last night, this is what happened: He adjusted a lever on the telescope, that’s it. I just happened to be standing in the way. Noah has an overactive imagination, written on every school report I’ve ever gotten. To which Mom would laugh and say, “A leopard can’t change its spots, now can it?”