LACY

Your lights flick on, casting a soft glow across the snow outside our windows. I wish I could say I haven’t been waiting for that flicker, that quiet announcement of your presence, but I’d be lying. This has always been my favorite time of day, when the world settles and you become the brightest thing in it.

We grew apart, slowly, like frayed threads pulling loose from a worn-out sweater. No more playdates arranged by our mothers, no more afternoons in the treehouse. Now it’s just you with your friends, and me with my window. I watch you from here, pretending I'm not, pretending it doesn't matter.

Your skin hasn’t changed much since we were kids, still porcelain, still soft in my memory. Except now it stretches over curves you never had to pretend to fill. Remember when we stuffed your mom’s bras with socks and paraded around like we owned the world? Back when we thought growing up was just about getting boobs and staying up past bedtime.

You grew into yourself like poetry. Me? I’m still stuck on the margins, waiting for my own verses to make sense. That’s why I change in the bathroom stalls at school, hiding my flat chest and the ache that comes with it. You never seemed to have that hesitation, walking through life like your body was art. But even art gets defaced, doesn’t it?

If I had a phone, if I were part of those endless text chains, I would've seen the photos. Not like they did. I wouldn’t have laughed. I would have looked at them the way I look at you from this window, with something sharp and soft tangled in my chest.

I can still hear their laughter echoing down the hallways, sharp as glass. I hope it never reached you the way it reached me. The bathroom graffiti? None of it was true. You were always more than their words, brighter than their bitterness. You shouldn’t have let them in, shouldn’t have carved their voices into your skin.

Pick-me.

Desperate.

Thirsty.

But I know it isn’t that simple.

If I could write this in the snow, big enough for you to see from wherever you are, I would. I’d tell you that you mattered. That you mattered to me, even when we stopped talking. Especially then. I’d tell you that your light still flickers on in my mind, and it always will.

I’d tell you that they aren’t worth your time.

They don’t deserve your pain.

They don’t deserve you tears.

They didn’t deserve the pieces of you they took.