It’s summer, but you don’t like summer. Your mother doesn’t like summer either, but she hates winter even more. She hates what it does to you.

“It’s not the frozen ground that keeps me stuck here,” you try to tell her, “It’s just my situation. I am a product of the world I’m living in, and I am tired of the world being sick.” You remind her how funny it is that you can swallow the thing that kills you and the thing that saves your life in the same mouthful.

Until the world starts to heal itself you will not be happy, and when you try to be self-sufficient you feel burnt out. You cry to your best friend on facetime and spend an hour wiping the mascara off while you listen to Bowie.

In the shower you run your finger over the point of each of your teeth and remember that you’re real and that last year you struggled in math class but were too embarrassed to admit it. Sometimes you act as if you were raised by wolves; you don’t clean the wound, you lick it. But you weren’t, and you know that there are better ways to deal.

Things start to get better and you start to feel it. You go back to life and think that maybe you’ll get a job next summer and you find a date for the fall dance and if a girl in your grade dates the same boy who followed you to your car three years ago you try not to let it bother you. Things start to get worse again and for the most part you don’t even realize it, but you think about how astounding it is that when a loved one dies we allow them to return to the earth. To everyone who is buried we say: We forgive you. You are not lost, you are coming home.

Your friend’s sister’s friend’s brother goes missing and someone comments that this city eats up boys like him. In English class you’re assigned to write a poem about why you love this city. You do love it, but you’re scared of it and you get an A.

You get sick and suddenly the world is over. You want to run away from your friends but you’re worried that if you do they won’t chase after you. One of them didn’t invite you to your birthday party this year and you don’t say anything about it. You fall asleep caressing your own face and think that you love the world.

You were afraid you wouldn’t ever get better but you do. You go back into the world again and when both of your parents are in the car you sit in the backseat like a little kid. You don’t get enough sleep and you meditate in health class, which is something that you’re surprisingly good at. You have to wear a mask inside your friend’s house. You pass a quiz. Time goes on and you heal and you’ll keep healing.

You write a song that has only two notes. C F F C F F C.

You send it to a friend that you’ve only known for 6 months and tell them that the words are what make it good.