My Dear Lux

She sprayed herself with every perfume she had. It gave her mother headaches. But he loved it. He said he loved her scent. She always smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine and iris and sweat. He smelled of musky smoke and sweat and cheap cologne. But she adored it. When they were apart, she fell asleep with her face buried in her arm. She swore she could smell his lingering scent. She soon realized that the scent was there to stay. It wasn't the smell of just him or just her. It was them. A delicate flower growing through the dark brown dirt. A great white shark in a blue sea of salt. That's how they always remembered each other. She tattooed her arms with unicorns and flowers and sea creatures and things that made her soul happy. He insisted on skulls and zombies and skeleton keys and sharks and lyrics from punk songs. She loved him. Even in those dark and smoke-filled punk shows she loved him. She knew there was something special. A love that could not be tamed or outgrown.

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She crossed the tracks and made her way to the mall one Saturday. Her shoes were blistering her heels and she could taste the summer heat drying up her mouth. The pavement burned the soles of her shoes. She walked through the glass doors into the cool shopping center. Silly, she thought. Everyone seems to look the same here in their cheaply made mall clothing. Not that her clothes were anything special. Just a button-up cheetah print dress she had hemmed crookedly. Maybe that's why everyone stared.
She made her way through the crowds of shiny-lip-glossed, bubblegum-popping girls with their boyfriends who would never really love them like they said they would in whispered midnight promises. All their nights of sneaking out and parties and beers and backseats and fake love would never compare to the passion that she had known with him. Her other twin half who had gone away with the first signs of winter.
She focused on changing. Now. Step one. She walked into the jewelry store. There were girls looking at fake diamonds and shot glasses hung on Mardi Gras beads. She sat in the pink chair as an oversized, cheaply glamorous woman sanitized her ear with stinging alcohol swabs. A little dark-haired boy peered up at her from behind the candy flavored lipgloss. They watched each other. He knew the pain she was about to feel. He had seen it happen to his older sister. 
As he watched, she thought that somehow this little boy knew about the pain. All of it. All 17 years of it. She winced as the needle pierced her earlobe. Crooked again, I bet, she silently worried. She looked again as the boy smiled sweetly up at her. What a strange thing it is to be 9. A time of innocence. A time to think that the world might be this way forever. To think that your life might, somehow, be able to skip all the bad parts. And that if you are lucky enough, you'll only see flowers and trees and cloudless blue skies. But age brings the knowledge that even the luckiest people can lose their best friends to car accidents and incurable diseases. Or even simply to the changing of a season.
She loved him in the springtime.

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i must have known it from the start. there was always something off. something not right. i never looked at you and thought, "hes the one i've been waiting for." and oh, i had been waiting. when we met, i had my fair share of love. and lost love. and love that was never really supposed to be love. i think you fell into that role. it must have been the way you looked so cool the night i first saw you. i couldn't help but stare. you hopped over the railing at that restaurant that smelled like beer and where everyone knew everyone's name. when i saw you that night, i knew your name before you introduced yourself. i heard stories about you. stories of how you made everyone laugh. we talked outside under the stars. on the southside of the city that you loved. the city you would never leave. you told me you worked at the record shop a few blocks away. they only paid you minimum wage. you asked about me and i told you about myself. how i had just graduated high school and that i planned on moving to chicago in the fall. it was june when we met. i had just driven 8 hours from my hometown to yours. my sister had thought that your tattooed roommate with dreadlocks was the boy of her dreams. and i thought that you could be mine. we sat and ate and talked until the sun rose the next morning. i wore your sweatshirts and pjs. later you told me that you wanted to hold my hand that night. and that you could have kissed me.

and when we did kiss for the first time, i felt something i had never felt before. i had told you not to kiss me. that i wanted to wait a little while. but one night you slipped up and said couldn't help yourself. "lets not be afraid of anything that cant really hurt us." i read that in a book while we rode the train from chicago to your hometown. while i read that line, you slept on my shoulder with headphones on, listening to punk rock. i decided to kiss you after i read that. i didn't think that you could really hurt me.

there were more kisses. and more hugs and squeezing hands. there was a time when we could talk without really talking. the looks. we knew each others looks. i think we were beginning to really fall in love. i think that we were in some kind of beginning stage. i think it really could have been love eventually. but the looks started to change. i knew what they meant still. i just didn't want to believe it. there was nothing in your eyes anymore. nothing behind them that said that you loved me. nothing that compared to the way you made me feel those times when you would dance with me and hold me and rub my back and kiss me.

and when things started to change, we ignored it. i still came to your shows. i went out to your best friend's farm and shot guns with you because you said you liked it. you took me to the river with all your best friends to swim. i remember you told me to jump in first. like i had something to prove to you, even though we both already knew we were over. i jumped in and swam the whole way across. you swam ahead, not looking back to me. when we got to the other side, your friends reached their hands out to me while you walked on. i jumped off the huge, grey rock right after you. 25 feet down and i hit the water. i opened my eyes as i went under. the water was clear blue and i could see the sun. as i gasped for air i looked at you and smiled. and you smiled back at me and swam toward me laughing and saying how cool i was to jump. it was moments like that when i thought things would be okay. that you really thought i was someone special.

we went on tour together. we drove through ohio and sat so close. i read a book and you listened to music mostly. then we drove to michigan. as we drove on the dark streets to the bar you were playing that night, i was so sad. i had tried to make you laugh and you had just ignored me. i knew it was over. i knew that we could not get back to where we were. i knew that all the joy and love and happiness we had felt was gone. my dad picked me up that night and drove me home. you stayed and played a show and ate dinner without me. you never had fun with me. and i never felt at home with you.

the last night we spent together was at your parents' house. they let us stay there. we had been trying to get away from the city. maybe if we could escape the noise and the busyness we could find each other again. we ate dinner and kissed and laughed. you held me tight and told me you loved me. then the next day you drove me to the airport. when we kissed goodbye i lingered and looked into your eyes, knowing it would be our last kiss. and it was. there in the same spot where we had said goodbye so many times before.

and now we don't speak anymore. after that kiss, i went to california. i knew somehow i would find what i was looking for in the state where i was born. there is something about the mountains and the ocean and the greenery there. i can find myself. i stayed in the house with plants everywhere and a pool in the backyard. cats ran around a played in the garden. i sat and ate with the boy who changed my life. we talked about animals and his country and he said the meal was lovely. and i thought about the first time i looked at him when i had met him in chicago. he smiled and our eyes lingered on each other. people say that when you know you know. i never believed that until i met him. so different than everyone else. like all my life i've been praying and hoping and wishing and trying to find him. and i cry because he is real. and i cry because you weren't. i cry because i wonder how you're doing. last i heard you were drinking again. you didn't want to talk to me when i asked how you were feeling. i hope you're doing well. i can only hope that you are happy because i have finally, finally found myself.