Easy where I feel sharpened down to function.
The kind of girl who knows how to stand in sunlight and let it adore her.
They look right together.
That’s the part I hate.
Not because I want him.
Because I don’t want to care whether he looks right with anyone at all.
No one shows at my sunrise bleacher workouts anymore. I’m on my own just how I had asked.
It’s somewhere in September and everyone has settled into patterns.
The campus fills out.
The energy changes.
It’s no longer athletes in a bubble.
Now it’s real college again.
Freshmen getting lost.
Clubs tabling on the quad.
Sorority girls in little skirts pretending they don’t sweat.
Engineering boys living on iced coffee and panic.
Life keeps happening.
And I am in it, but not exactly part of it.
I go to class.
I answer questions.
I hold doors.
I study in the library under that same stupid green lamp on the second floor because the light is less harsh there.
I do my laundry late enough that the room is empty.
Iron my clothes because wrinkled fabric makes me irrationally irritated.
Meal prep on Sundays with military precision.
The girls on my floor start calling me “domestic” as a joke.
I laugh when they say it.
But the truth is uglier.
I’ve made my life so tight there’s no room for surprise.
No room for softness.
