19 years old justwrite

Lindsey's dorm room is a time machine, and every night feels like the first we sat side by side on her bed feigning adulthood with dollar store champagne flutes, talking about ex-boyfriends and once girlfriends and someday lovers to wake up with on Sunday afternoons, brush their hair away from their sleep-weighted eyes and finally know what prayer feels like. I tell her sometimes I think she doesn't exist, like the girl who really lives in her room waits pacing in the corner while I lean on her pillow and talk to myself. I don't mind as long as I don't know. Lindsey picks weeds for me and calls them wildflowers. I hang her birthday roses upside down so they blush all winter while Kyra squeezes the stems, her fingers sticky, asking me about my skin. I say it's thicker than ever, freckles tunneling for months until they reach the surface, my sweetpea seeds still dormant in this pot under the clingwrap, the only ones who know whether or not they're alive. The sun is stronger than ever these days, but my roots are still asleep and haven't learned to stretch, are just beginning to taste with their fingertips, to discover what they already hold. The water here leaves white rings of powdery minerals on the inside of the cup I use to water my plants. Lindsey drinks from the sink now but tells me she thinks her cactus is dying with watery eyes, more salt than tears, wondering how anything blooms in the desert and how long that spiderweb was in the corner above her bed before she found it. I have her counting dust particles, tell her that spiders would rather move on than clean up, while the clock on her microwave blinks at me with three zeros, me leaning on her pillow laughing to myself, two plastic champagne flutes drying by her mirror.