My people!
My relationships end and they end and they begin but they end.
When they end, they become Sundays that lead to next week.
They become stairs that step up to the next floor.
But my people! Oh, my people!
I once believed that everything is a means to an end.
Not them.
Not now.
They bring peace and homecoming with so much as a glance.
I fear getting used to that feeling.
Because before, I knew I would have the stairs to fall back on.
But these people are not Sundays,
They are Fridays.
They are the color purple projected on a white painted wall.
They are the fuzziness in my hands when I get excited.
They are my eyelids crinkling when I laugh.
They are every grain of brown sugar, and I am the remnants of the apple crisp on the plate.
It is not enough to say how I feel in the simplest form,
“I love you,”
Anymore.
It is not enough to wrap someone in my arms and feel theirs around me.
It has not been enough.
I hope you—yes, you—feel this kind of love in between your finger bones when you intuitively crack them.
I hope you hear it in the helicopters that pass every few minutes—In the depth of your chest as you breathe.
I hope when I am bedridden, cold and decaying, that I remember the rooms we laugh in.
The receipts on the walls, the color of the couch.
I hope the snapshots of your faces line the ceiling in my brain.
You are the criminals on the wanted posters.
Please steal more of my time. And give me everything in your pockets.
Give me your stories straight from your lips.
Cast me in your next one.
Hales (he/they) is a student at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, studying Creative and Entertainment Industries and minoring in Music Business. He’s been a writer since elementary school, occupying many a notebook with short stories and personal narratives, and taking a recent liking to poetry.
Featured image by Jed Villego
