Crush

A crush can be light, low-calorie, breezing through Beverly Hills with the top down, smiley faces after all of your phrases, the singsong voice you use when you talk to him. A crush can be a hand brushing your bare arm and the thrill of it. A crush can be doodling your name with his, a teenage monogram. But a crush can be tyranny. Captivity. It can be the lingering side effect of love. It can be the stunted, never-born romance that played and played out in your head. Anything can remind you of him—punctuation, a phone charger, anyone who wears glasses. You skitter across his mind; he texts and derails your day, a U-turn on your once-sunny highway. Now, it’s tangled hair, and not rain—but the non-commitment of clouds. Now, it’s just you, standing there, waiting above ground outside the station for his reply, though that rumble is your train and who knows how long it’ll take him, how long those sliding doors will stay open.