Tuesday, April 24, 2012


He has this other girl, he forgot about me
I'm in love with broken glass

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She called me Kendria

Every day for at least three years she called me Kendria. I could have corrected her the first time, but I didn't. Just look at her shoulders -- 18, and life had crushed her. Most of it had to be the shyness, but the rest was her glasses. They were the biggest things in the room. Dark, round, and insanely out-of-place frames warping her frightened eyes: nobody likes me, they said.

We would go together along the cracked college sidewalks she used to walk alone. My energy was flying around like popcorn and I wondered if all the talk that I used to fill up the space between Economics and American Literature was just bubble gum to her. She was quiet and her smiles were few, but she smiled all the time for me. We walked from American Literature to the cafeteria. She liked peanut butter and jelly and ginger ale. That sounded so damn old. 

I pictured her as an only child, and late. Maybe she came from a household with flowered wallpaper and a very neat kitchen. Maybe her childhood was a soiled-apron, cardigan-sweater thing, with bathroom-scissor haircuts. 

Anyway, I was Kendria and I just let her think that. Kendria was her companion, and she was mine.

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