Some of us exist outside the realm of normal relationships. We’ve got an intensity and a nonchalance, sinisterly dressed up as confidence.

You gave me this record about summer crushes as your way to communicate I was a summer crush. I get it now. That was perfect.

As a woman I’m not allowed to talk about my beautiful, perfect lovers, all adorned with flowers in their hair in my memories of them. They drift like a kaleidoscope in my mind’s eye as I lie stoned in my bedroom, my bed big enough for just one. I want to keep it that way.

But you — I love you. I loved all of you. I touched myself under the sheets to you. I dreamed of our futures. They were the best because I knew they would never come true. My imagination unwound with visions of our lavish lifestyles — soft focused and far away — through the eye of our personal photographer. Because: duh.

I know who I am, so do you know who you are? What you are is lost and that’s okay, because I am too. We lose ourselves in each other, my body rises to meet yours, and for a moment we’re not alone. We are not alone.

I am not alone.

You are …

Alone.

I wish to collect you like baubles on my dresser, and when I dust the surface I touch you, consider you, move you, arrange you as a constellation among my other lovers. My night sky.

You forget the sky until you look up. The street is long and gray and quiet. You walk home under heaviness, until you look up.

You’ve never felt so much light.