visiting creative writing club and going through krut withdrawal justwrite

S stands for certified like a name on a birth certificate folded into the third drawer in my dresser, packets of seeds on the floor by my bed so I can remember thoughts spreading like wildflowers before I fall asleep and whisper to you that I want to be a vine because they are the only plant that grows toward touch. I remember the afternoon you fingerpainted my skin with shadows that I can still see today, the inkwells under my eyes pouring out onto the table, a black hole where my pupils wander, trying to remember their lessons but losing their footprints in puddles of ink. At home, the puddles are frozen and crack beneath my weight, crack like eggshells between your palms, thinking about the frailty of life and not remembering you've been making breakfast until the room is full of smoke and your lungs shake you back out of your mind, the french toast burning on the stove, an audience of strangers watching moss grow over your feet as your bones become stone, crack in the winter because water expands when it becomes ice, struggling to fill up space that isn't there. I'm a certified lifeguard who never learned to swim because the only pools I've ever seen were in your eyes, surrounded by irises, reflecting sunsets and my own face when the ripples stop and I try to memorize the lines on my cheeks, wondering if they are laugh lines or worry lines when really they're all life lines, sweat carving roadmaps into my body, only ever telling me where I've been.