Typically, he swipes up & I think he’s a sonnet-eyed Robin Hood. Who
am I kidding? I am a romantic who believes time intervals between text
messages sent & how quickly he doesn’t respond & how
quickly I do signify something other than the fact that I am a
speck of dust within a dust storm in Idaho.
but he’s done this before and he knows that I & others blush when we see his
decapitated Bitmoji & sure, yes, he has a girlfriend
at Brown and the only Brown that I know
and will know are my eyes & skin & yes, when we go to sleep at night in boarding
school Hell, he’ll end up in twin-sized-beds-too-small for 2 lusty teens but there’s
2 anyway. Still, on mythical Snapchat we exist together like kids who
are scared & amazed at thunderstorms & lightning sparks. There, I told him, as cheekily
as someone who feels as small as me could be to someone as charming as him
with a fantastical girlfriend who sometimes migrates from Providence, Rhode Island by male
manipulator-owned camaros, that he still calls his, that I want to be his in, well, any season,
even though she’s the one who named him, made ‘em who he is:
manwhore,
or boy with the grin that makes me see the
stars.
She told him, last Spring, when they broke up that she invented all of the shapes & answers to
puzzles that could put two serious people in beds that are college extra twin size BIG
and sometimes even 3, 4, or 5 people. In less words, she’s never coming back to Idaho—“2 many
parties & new boys that make me feel stars”—no matter how much
he still claims she’s the reason he has sunshine rains & his smile widens.
On Instagram, I’ll comment: you’re HIM, and this will get hidden amongst all the other lovesick
fools. But, I’ll still grin, yes, I will. I, bittersweet, will be reborn & reborn until Snapchat rots,
replaced like Myspace & then he will hold another girl tender like rain despite
the fact she’s only ever been treated like hail.
And on days of rain, I’ll think of him. One day, there will finally
be a serious downpour & I’ll be a serious college girl still
asking him in the dead of night: if we could ever fit together in
your head?
Writer | Siani-Simone Ammons ’27 | sammons27@amherst.edu
Editor | Tapti Sen ’25 | tsen25@amherst.edu
Artist | Erxi Lu ’24 | erlu24@amherst.edu