I bought some new chapstick today and when I put it on memories of you came back to me. Visions of us in ninth grade, standing by the ramp during ten minute break. I would put on chapstick and you would lean in to kiss it off. You would respond either by giving me a shake of your head or another kiss. Vanilla was your favorite that one always got a second kiss. I've been thinking a lot about us lately. The way we were, with our own jokes and secret codes. It was stupid of me to think that we could get that back now. We may still remember the code and retell the jokes but the language has changed, we're speaking now in some foreign tongue of adulthood our ninth grade minds can't comprehend.

So it is with a sweet sadness that I come to terms with that. I'll put away the pictures of us, keep them in a box with the rest of high school. File away all the poetry that was written with you in mind. I'm sure I'll get a craving for you in the months to come and I'll dig them back out. Pull the pictures out from the piles, flip through the notebooks, reading over the words scrawled in my high school hand. But I'll keep the chapstick and the memory of your lips on mine. I can't quit cold turkey you're just too hard to shake.