There was that time we danced in your kitchen, our socks picking up traces of dirt along the hardwood floor. I kept looking down and you kept looking at me, that way that you always do, your eyes two tunnels, or whirlpools that suck me in.

There was that time she made us buy cards for each other and we rock-paper-scissored to see who went first. Why did it take me so long to choose one? We wrote in them and exchanged them and said we didn't care for the day of love but secretly we did.

There was that time we built a fort out of blankets because everything else went wrong and the battery wasn't charged so we couldn't watch the video of our banquet speeches so instead we watched people eating and I had my head on your heart again. It beats so loudly I wonder how big it is, if it is bigger than mine, fuller than mine, kinder than mine. Likely.

There was that time it took us an hour to say goodbye and we said everything we liked about each other which was a lot, we said it because who knows if you would come back? Then I would have all these pretty words and nothing to do with them. They would rot in my mouth. So I gave them to you. Then you were gone.

There was that time I lost my mind when you were away. I ate a handful of blue jellybeans and then I made a bracelet, and then I went to the piano but my heart had no song, so I went back to my room, ate another handful of blue jellybeans, made another bracelet, and did this over and over until it was time to sleep.

There was that time that I thought I loved you, and it scared me, so I suppressed it. Sometimes when you ignore something it goes away but sometimes when you ignore something it gets bigger and bigger until it consumes you, until it is all you think about and you can't get anything else done, you are a slave to the feeling and I don't want that. I didn't ask for that. I push it away.

There was the time it came back. There was the time you came back. There was the time I accepted it but never told you. There was the time the words rotted and you left again. There was the time I became a slave to a new feeling: remorse.