You got the tattoos you always wanted. The two betta fish on your arm, sunk in red, the black spider lilies across your stomach. You love the kids you teach now. First graders who will do anything you want as long as you say, you really disappointed me last time! but you love them so much & know that they can do so much better. I saw online that you finally learned how to do liquid eyeliner. No more smudging, no more muddy brown eyeshadow. Every photo of you featuring just a flick upwards like another eyelash. Maybe you finally started writing people back, even though I’m not included on this list. Maybe you finally told your parents you changed your major—do your cousins at church know? Does your mom love you now in the way you want, now that you’re baptized? Can you live with yourself? I know you don’t pray to God. I know you don’t believe in yourself either. I know it’s been a while since you said anything real, following every shot by the rule of thirds. Do you remember when we first met. Two years ago             right before summer came down on us hard. April a prologue to our sleeplessness. Our regret, the correspondence of it, how it multiplied, we said a lot of things like, please try therapy, and, basically, think like a social media safety guideline. I’m still downing three fistfuls of melatonin every night. Still stripping back hangnails like wallpaper, hoping for the raw of it. I keep running myself into the direction of your house but that’s nothing now. Isn’t it. I’m so glad you’re doing well now. You and your dog and an impossible view, the way Phoebe Bridgers sings it, even though you still forget to eat. Even though us. Even though you don’t remember             don’t you remember / don’t you still want us? Do you even need to think about how it felt? 4am, trading messages back and forth until our typos began tripping into themselves, dawn just another alarm to shut out. Every confession that curdled in our arms. The truth was, our parents could both get better. They could have been nicer. Picked us up from school and came clean. You could have loved me, and I would’ve let you.