Article by Mira Springer Art by Leyla Kramarsky & Mira Springer

I think about you like it's a hobby, like it's something I could win a prize in if I really put my mind to it. Mostly, I think about you because it's fun, but I will do it until it's not. I'll do it until I win a blue ribbon for thinking about you and then wonder what I wanted with a blue ribbon in the first place.

You've never been to my home state, but when I walked into my room, my childhood bed reminded me of you because I talked to you on the phone there twice. You were high both times and you didn't know that your voice was in my room with me, nestled in the tender softness between the blanket and my naked body, asking me questions about high school theater. You couldn't see me grinning.

I go from smiling into my phone to smiling against your lips. You taste like coffee and instant ramen and popcorn. You taste like the joint between your teeth, now tucked behind your ear. You like it when I taste like gin. I taste you in gentle kisses that demand no sequel and in the mixed salt of your pleasure and my sweat.

We left the party out the back door (again) because one of the other girls was on the porch (again). You told her you were sick and I lied to my friend on the phone about going to bed. (It was more of a misdirection than a lie. I was going to bed.)

"If you want to hook up with her you should go do that and if you don't, you should tell her." I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm trying to protect her from being strung along while clutching my own string tightly between your hand and mine.

"Yeah. Yeah. It's just that it’s almost the end of the year."

"And then what— it dissolves?"

"Yeah."

"Does this dissolve?"
A beat. (An intimate conversation with theatrical rhythm.)

"I don't want it to."

I don't know how much you meant it but it was a pretty thing to say. I like hearing you say pretty things to me so I let you do it even when you don't mean them. I keep falling asleep in your bed without even hooking up with you first.

In broad daylight, you intertwine your fingers with hers while I stand four feet away.

"Tough watch," I joke when you walk by me.

"Was it?" asks my friend later.

"Sort of," I tell him. But really it doesn't matter where your fingers wander at midday because I woke up with them on my waist and I'll go to sleep with them in my hair.

I used to treat my sore throats with honey pomegranate cough drops. I would put one in my mouth before bed and I wouldn't start to fall asleep until it dissolved completely. Now, when it gets late and something is aching, I keep myself awake sucking gently on the thought of you. I used to sleep better in my own bed, but the absence of your body next to mine inflates your presence in my mind and now I sleep better in yours.

One of those late nights in my own room, I wrote in my journal, "I wonder if he knows that he could text me to come over at midnight when I'm about to fall asleep and I'd wake up in his bed the next morning." Half an hour later, my phone lit up in the dark; an incoming call paused my white noise app, tugging me out of a hypnagogic state. I woke up in your bed the next morning.

I guess we don't need to text each other about getting lunch if you turn on my white noise before we fall asleep and whine when I disentangle my limbs from yours to turn it off in the morning.

You write while I'm in your bed. You write about your bed and you don't write me into it. She's a ghost that you conjure in the library when she isn't there; I'm a phantom you erase from your sheets so you can write about her.

I told my best friend that I wonder sometimes if I lack self-respect. She said, "if your goal is not to get hurt (and that's a stupid goal), you make different decisions."

Some days you seem sadder and tireder than others. Green eyes and smile lines give way to purple shadows and vacancy. I'm scared of losing interest in you. I'm scared that I won't lose interest. I'm scared you'll stay sad and tired and I won't even have the heart to convince myself that I can change you.

Something you said to me once: "I want to see so much theater with you." You said when we saw that play together, you imagined that we were in our 30s and had been married for ten years. You imagined this and you told me it was nice and still I never know which nights I'm coming home with you and still you don't write about me.

Something you said to me once: "Talking to you is like reading good creative nonfiction." I like that we compliment each other in literary terms. I told you that the thing you said to me in the library would make a good monologue. I wrote about you in my journal all the time. I wrote down all the pretty things you said to me.

Maybe writing requires distance. I didn't write about you outside my journal until now that we are three time zones apart. The space in between allows my thoughts to ferment into something that leaves a stain. Maybe three time zones isn't enough for you. Next week, we'll be on opposite sides of the world. My noon will be your midnight. Maybe you'll write about me then.

Distance must be carefully considered by anyone writing about sirens. Too far away and they are too blurry to describe in any detail, but too close and you get swallowed up into the sea. Your siren is holding you at arm’s length; she tempts you to drown yourself and you resist just enough to write about it. I'm not asking you to drown yourself. I'm sick of watching your head dip below the water but my voice isn't made of satin and I don't have the power to lure you back to land.

Holding you is like holding my breath. Holding myself hostage, holding my tongue.

The idea of you is suffocating in my cupped hands but if it encounters air with enough oxygen, it will start to rust on contact. So I hold my breath, hold my tongue, pretend my hands are empty.

I am allowing myself something sweet without feeling guilty.

Two out of every three times I repeat it to myself it feels true.

The idea of you is hot maple syrup. I keep my fingers shut tight so that you don't spill. My hands are growing tired with the effort. Every night that I drink you, you slide down my throat, coat it with your sugar, and fill my stomach with your warmth.

In the morning I don't feel warm or guilty. My teeth are crusted over with your sweetness and I don't have a toothbrush at your house.