A.E. Janes

            Somewhere it's Saturday morning and you're telling me that you love me more than anything else. I hear about your dreams as you're waking up and you sleepily ask about mine which I always have a hard time remembering. I tell you I used to write them down. I used to keep post-it notes and scraps of notebook paper with fragments of dreams written down on them in the drawer of my bedside table. I thought someday I'd use them to write a fantastic story. Somewhere it's Saturday afternoon and you're holding my hand as we walk down the street to get coffee. You buy me tea for three dollars and fifty cents and the waiter tells us that we look pretty. You share it with me. You hate tea but you love me. You love to look at me sweetly while I talk, watching me with concern, making sure I know you care. I get embarrassed by the attention easily. We quietly wonder when it'll end. 
            Somewhere it's Thursday and we sit there sharing the passenger seat of my car. You pick the biting ants and burrs off my bare feet as if you still love me. I think about how unsure I am this time around of the promises you made me. You're tired and so am I but I'm used to being exhausted; what's a little more? Somewhere it's Thursday and I've bitten off more than I can chew. We sit there in the car crying into each other's arms. I sit there hating that you're trying to be my friend the way I tried before. I sit there hating that it's easy for you to be my friend even after both of us agreed so many times we could never. What changed? I hate that I could live a year miserable and in love with you and using all my strength trying to make the best of things because at least I'd know you weren't going to leave me. I sit there on the drive home thinking of how I imagined spending my birthday with you, seeing the card you'd write me, seeing what you'd get me since we're exactly alike, and now you won't be there. Somewhere it's Thursday evening and I buy myself a pretty little necklace so something shines nicely on my newly bare neck. I thought I'd buy something pretty to put a piece of your hair in too, but I heard somewhere it's bad luck to buy yourself a locket. I don't understand the superstition. I plan on abiding by it. Somewhere it's Thursday evening and I go to the store and buy myself new soap because the last time I changed the flavor you told me it smelled good. I need a new smell you won't recognize. I walk to the gas station fifteen minutes away, unsure if I can even handle that task without wanting to call you for encouragement. I buy myself chocolate which isn't good for me because I'm lactose intolerant. 
            Somewhere it's Friday and I wonder if it hurt to leave someone who didn't do anything particularly wrong. I wake up at 6 and never go back to sleep because I can't stop hearing how you begged me to let you go when I was crying on the phone. Somewhere it's Friday and I feel stupid for how easily I come back every time. Why do I need to find out if you meant it? Why can't I just leave it be? I guess it's because you said I'm your best friend. So it's okay for me to sob and tell you everything and beg you the way you begged me. It's okay for me to tell you that it's not fair you get to leave when all I want is to stay. Somewhere it's Friday night and I'm at home looking in the mirror, begging you to take me back. In the mirror I sat down in a coffee shop across from this woman who wore a flowy orange dress and sandals so everyone could see her toe ring and ankle tattoo. She asked me how I had been doing and gave me advice for work and somehow, like I always manage to, I turned the conversation where I needed it to go. In the mirror I break down and tell her what had happened over the summer. I tell her I have no place to go and that it isn't even about getting some boy back who might stop loving me someday, but how it was about how scared I am that I won't make it until next August. I tell her about how this boy and I broke up, how I couldn't figure out who left who but I'm pretty sure he left me because he's firm in his position and I'm pretty sure he's got someone else but if I had somewhere else to go that wasn't home maybe he would still have me. Somewhere it's barely Saturday morning again and I'm looking at myself in the mirror nauseous over how desperate I sound, whispering to my roommate through tears, coughing up mucus that pooled in my throat, making it hard to breathe. Then I left the coffee shop and met you again. I was trying to figure out how long it had been since I'd seen you but I was too tired. Maybe it was a few weeks, maybe it was three years. I sat you down and told you my plan, I told you I wanted you there with me but how I lacked trust in your words which were always so easy to say. I didn't feel much when I talked to you other than a pit in my stomach because I sat in the same place in front of my mirror like I used to when I was a kid. When I was little I'd imagine things in the mirror. I would close my bedroom door and imagine the friends I didn't have, really, mainly, the life I could make for myself once I turned eighteen. 
            Somewhere it's Saturday and you and I are in my blue car driving eighty-seven miles: we go from my house to yours to my work to get food to slow dance in a park then back to your house and back to mine. When I get home alone I'm putting dish soap on mustard stains that are all over my pants, thinking about the way my chest released tightness when I was pressed to you again. I think about how you took up my hand in the park and showed me what to do. I think about you giving into letting me drop the formalities of dancing in favor of simply wrapping my arms around your neck. I think about how when you dipped me I thought about how people do that at their weddings and I wondered if we'd ever get a chance to get that good like you told me you wanted to. While I scrub the stains I wonder if you were just caught up in me, not realizing I took everything you said so seriously. I'm thinking about the way you look at me like I'm special to you. At home I'm mostly thinking about how I'll see you the next day and in a few days after that. I'm wondering how life got to look so pretty and wishing it would stick around. It's funny for me to think those things because on Friday you seemed dislike me so much. You hated the way I cry and you hated the fact that you love me and you hated the fact that I don't want to say goodbye. You act like it all the time. You push me away like I did to you before I realized I love you, so I stand next to my bed, dizzy, hoping I might not wake up to the next day at hand and instead I'll get back to the Saturdays we used to have. 
            Somewhere it's Saturday all the time and I'm happy because I never forget the way you smell and you're still telling me that you love me more than anything else.