Marisa Donnelly

A phone was just a thing. It was replaceable. But the memories, the laughs, the dancing, the friends that surrounded me and the strangers I hadn’t yet met—those things weren’t.

We don’t. We communicate in garbled languages, in words typed and misconstrued behind keyboards and screens. We text what we mean and then we erase it. And we write what we think we should say, what the world wants us to.

“You would look better with bigger boobs / butt.”

There are books to be read, music to be listened to, voices and memories to soak in. There are people and places and entire worlds outside your front door, just waiting to be discovered. And you can find yourself in all of it.

But you were my adventure. You were my Friday nights, my cross-country trips, my pounding heart, my spark.

You suddenly see your life paved out in front of you, magical and terrifying and new.

Not when the shower water sends goosebumps down your back. Not when you walk through town and see the place where we first kissed, outside your old apartment in the glow of the faded streetlight.

You don’t take anyone’s sh*t.

You are so much more than a body, created and capable, futile and flawed.

I am not afraid to feel the wind through my hair, the sun on my face, a backpack on my shoulders and a map in my hands.

Thousands of perfectly constructed cells were molded together to create you.

I built my resume by saying yes to a ton of stuff.

You have stopped concerning yourself with what your ex is doing, or what he will think of what you’re doing.

When you wanted to wear that skimpy crop top or cheeky bikini that made you look wayyyy older than your age.

I am homesick for the way you will love me, innocently yet recklessly, gently yet deeply.

Twerking and/or some form of erotic (or just weird af) dancing.

Photographs are like time capsules that let you flit, for a second, between what was and what is.

Not when we’re quiet and tangled in bed sheets, not in the shadow of a porch light, and not in a silent car on the highway.