"you are the movie"
"indoor living"
in the corner of the room, sitting in a pile
of crumpled composition-book dreams and chewed-up Ticonderogas
sits this boy with his shiny new guitar
that he's got from the thrift.
with a strange kind of grace and heat-flattened hair
he looks like a young Mikey Way
and he's invisible to everyone here
except for me.
I point him out to the partygoers
has-beens, once-weres, and tried-out failed friends
but no one can see him and they don't think he's real
it's a shame they can't see his soft eyes
they can't feel the way he makes me feel
I walk with him down the street from the coffeeshop
where it smells like old books and worn leather
and I stammer over meaningless words as he asks me
if there are any songs I've ever liked
and I can't come up with an answer.
all the freckles, blemishes, and lines on his face
coalesce to form the constellations
and I am mapping them as he's playing major chords.
like an ancient Greek astronomer,
the world is newly opened and new to me
and I am enthralled.
we hold hands,
and he laughs dryly when he sees how small his hand is in mine.
he says something vaguely self-deprecating,
and then we walk in silence.
we get into a contest seeing how much hi-c we can drown our problems in
he has more sorrows than I do, and they're terrible at swimming,
so he wins.
I accompany him to the thrift store where he got his beaten-up guitar
so that he can buy two new pairs of women's jeans
and a porcelain duck that catches his eye.
he pays for me to take home a cardigan.
I sleep in the backseat of his van, but I can't sleep,
because I am looking through the skylight
and thinking to myself
"wow, isn't it beautiful to be alive?"
in the morning we sit together with my head in his hair
and I tell him the truth
which is that I didn't think anyone like him really existed
because movies aren't real and they don't count
but that I am glad to have met him
and that I wouldn't change a thing.
and when I wake up that afternoon,
he's already gone,
but he's left me a note
tucked into the yellow collar of a thrift-store cardigan
and a shiny new beaten-up guitar.