By Sophia Cvetkovic

I stifle a giggle as the seat squeaks under the weight of you.
You roll your eyes and sigh in mock annoyance,
because the truth is,
you love to hear me laugh;
you hear it echoing in your ears for hours after,
filling up any empty space in you until there is
such an excess of it you start breathing it in.

You lean forward, putting all your force
right onto the edge of the seat;
it guffaws like an old car horn
and we both unleash a storm of laughter,
moving forward in unison:
two magnets leaning into the pull.

My eyes widen to take in the sight,
our laughter playing on loop.
I almost feel as though I am outside of my body,
looking at this moment through the glossy lens of a telescope,
holding it as gently as a memory.
I could almost be the grass, folding under the flat soles of our shoes,
taking on the weight of our being.

But we rest uneasy now, unevenly,
as your seat sinks just a little lower than mine.
You said you had always loved seesaws as a kid;
they made you feel tall, but to me, they feel like a trick.

One word and we are both sinking;
all our feelings wound together like rope,
scraping violently past each other.
The red paint is chipped and screaming,
your eyes are wet and bleeding.

We say things passionately with bile
leaking out the corner of our mouths.
We fall with such force, colliding hard with the soggy,
miserable ground at full speed.

How quickly things change;
your name means something else entirely at this moment.
I spit it out like a curse.
The memory curdles like milk gone sour.
I love you but it makes me bitter.
We are everything in extremes,
falling over one another,
unbalanced like the seesaw;
the desperation a collective lump in our throats,
now prohibiting speech, all laughter fading
into the sound of the wind.

–

Sophia (she/her) is a 17 year old high school student from South Florida. She is an aspiring English major and spends most of her free time writing songs and poetry. You’ll also find her watching gut-wrenchingly sad shows, reading fantasy books, and practicing guitar. She’ll probably never fail to mention the fact that she is Serbian.