The Seven Year Slip

You could never be a bad idea, Lemon.”

And you’ll follow?”
“To the moon and back,”

I didn’t have anyone to rub my back and tell me that it was okay not to be okay. I had to tell myself as I sat on my kitchen floor in the middle of the night and cried into a pillow

if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do.

Because the things that mattered most never really left.

The love stays.

The love always stays, and so do we.

“I dreamed so much of you.”

“How’s reality?” I asked, myself around him, never wanting to let him go.

“Fuck, so much better.”

“What do you tell people, when they ask about it?”

His shyness melted into a smile, warm and gooey like chocolate. “I tell them about a girl I fell in love with at the right place but the wrong time.”

A knot lodged in my throat. “And what are you going to tell them now?”

“That we finally got the timing right.”

“A matter of time,” I whispered.

“A matter of timing,” he proposed

He’d gotten a lemon flower tattooed over his heart.

I could listen to the way his tongue wrapped around the letters of my name for the rest of my life

I love you, Lemon