People Need a Melody

Never Grow Up - Taylor Swift

My little brother's head is warm against my shoulder. Why are kids' bodies always burning up? Part of me wants to move but I can tell he's falling asleep and even though I'm only in seventh grade I recognize this is a moment I'd like to last a little longer and that it will never last long enough. The prickle of his short hair against my skin, the way he snuggles into me as he drifts in and out of sleep. I wear a lot of soft long sleeved shirts that are meant to be pajamas but I wear them as regular daytime clothing. My little brother likes that my clothes are soft. My clothes might be the softest thing in his life.

I don't remember why I'm the one putting him to sleep tonight instead of our mom but we're in her enormous king-sized bed, taking up the entire middle. Probably watching some cartoon-like The X-Men or that one he likes with the Storm Troopers from Star Wars. I don't think this is one of those nights I made him watch a horror movie. This night is too sweet for that particular brand of older sister torture.

Even though somewhere in my twelve-year-old brain I recognize that this time is precious, part of me still can't wait until he falls asleep so I can slip into my room and spend the rest of the night with sitcoms on in the background while I write countless stories in my journals. Too soon, he does sink fully into sleep. His dark brown eyes with impossibly long lashes close. His full lips that I spent his baby years bribing wet sticky kisses from part, drool pooling in the corners. He's lost his toddler smell recently. He's started to smell like a boy - sweaty and gross. But it's okay because right now he looks like the very first day I held him in the hospital minutes after he was born. He's not mine but in so many ways he feels like mine. The deep rise and fall of his chest signal that if I want to leave, I can. It's unlikely he'll wake up. But I don't. Instead in a whispered tone, I sing to him a song about never growing up. But he's not Peter Pan, he'll be twenty in a few days.

Hopeless Wanderer - Mumford and Sons

By the age of sixteen, I'm convinced I won't make it to eighteen. These are the moments I am sure my sweet little brother doesn't care about me anymore and will always side with our mom. I don't believe he will miss me as much as I will miss him. These are the moments I am sure that if one more person abandons me, I'll break. These are the moments I'm sure that if my mother reminds me one more time how much of a disappointment I am, I'll kill myself. These are the days I spend with packs of razor blades bought from Walgreens hidden in the bottom of my bookbag. This is the day I meet a guy with wildly curly hair who works at Walgreens and he notices that the only two things I am buying are rubber bands and razor blades.

That night he takes me wandering after his shift is over. We are strangers when the walk begins and friends by the time we reach the steps of my front porch. I can't remember if the day is warm or cold or wet but I remember that I am safe for maybe the very first time. This new friend tells me he's not going anywhere. I don't believe him when he hugs me goodbye but it's been twelve years and we still talk and he's still here.

Arms - Christina Perri

Snow. I don't like the snow. I am underweight and the cold hurts. But under his weight, the snow glitters from outside of the window in the street lights. Under his weight, the blanket fort is a magic tree house and the hardwood living room floor is soft. Under his weight, the first pain of something more intimate than I've ever experienced feels like love.

Let Her Go - Passenger

This is the last time we'll be together. We're sitting on my pink bed in my pink room in my dad's house. There's a box in my closet that contains two condom wrappers. My first time with someone else and our first time. In that box, there is also the syringe I planned to end my life with senior year of high school. I don't know why but I can't throw it away. It's been two years since graduation. In that box, there is also the bloodstained gauze from the most recent attempt on my life. The gash on my arm itches. I try to ignore it. I focus on tears falling from green eyes and for once they don't make me angry. We hold hands. I play this song. But we both know who should've played this song for who. We both know I'm the one that lost you, and you claimed the grace you deserved.

Like Real People Do - Hozier

I think I'm dying when he kisses me for the first time. I literally cannot breathe. He and I have spent the night on opposite sides of the bed from each other. I don't let him sleep. I'm afraid to sleep in a stranger’s house and I'm afraid to be alone but I'm also afraid to let him touch me. I've been burned so many times. But he asks before he kisses me and no one ever asks me before they do anything. We talk all night but I don't remember what we say. Only that we create a thread in the dark. A ribbon tied from his middle finger to mine. An invisible string that will change everything forever, that will pull each other from the bugs and the dirt.

"Are you going to freak out if I kiss you?" He asks.

A few minutes later I stand in the doorway of his bedroom kissing him back.

Candles - Daughter

I pretend I am not scared of him. I pretend I am bold. And confident. And that if anyone will break someone's heart it will be me breaking his. But I think all of that is betrayed by the way I tremble under the covers, his body pressed against mine. We kissed for the first time a week ago. I've been at his house with his mom's cigarette smoke hugging the walls and the beer his grandpa drinks tinging the air. Of course, it could be him - not his grandfather - that smells like alcohol. It could be his breath against my face, sticky with the whiskey that serves as his dinner. But I don't care because nothing feels as thick and warm like honey as his tongue flicking across my bottom lip. Or the belt of his jeans brushing against my fingertips.

There's no snow when we take off our clothes. No music playing in the background. Nothing makes his weight feel like love except for my desperation. His skin on mine is the kind of magic created by blown-out birthday candles. When we take off our clothes the sun is already rising in the sky. We've spent all night pressed against each other in the dark and now we're exposed. Roots bare. Beating hearts and heaving breath. And I know at that moment I'll do anything he wants me to.

Afterward, we take a walk. We take a walk and he tells me more about his life and home and what built his brittle bones. And I decide that we are the same and never look back.

Rivers and Roads - The Head and the Heart

I move states with the guy that I decide shares my same skin. Sharing skin becomes uncomfortable because no matter how similar we started out we both change. We grow together and apart and die a little in the middle. I miss my friends. I miss my brother. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I am failing my brother. The guy that shares my skin; his friends hate me for growing in between him and them and trying to rip up the weeds that threaten to choke healthy blossoms. Wild and unruly I get punctured by his thorns while he navigates the winding road that is growing sideways from everything you've ever known and the deep river of grief created by people lost along the way.

I cry to my friends on the phone about everything that's been going wrong and the tears make me grow flowers over wounds. I heal with scars and our roots have trouble reaching each other. So instead, we twist around and make room for all the things we don't talk about.

He follows me when I move back home. He misses his friends and he misses his brothers and sister. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks he is failing the friends that haven't grown with him.

He and I are very different now. And somehow, we are still the same. There is something about putting all your pieces back together next to someone else that makes it hard to see the color red. Even if those pieces never fit the right way again.

I begin to forge my own skin, a new skin - one that fits only me. And we are left to figure out what that means about how we fit together.

Never Grow Up - Taylor Swift

When I come home my brother is grown up. We are nine years apart. We grow in separate timelines. While I find myself in the arms of lovers and glittering flakes of snow and honey-whiskey breath, he loses himself. He turns teen angst into tattoos and affiliations that don't have a termination clause; he forgets about the soft clothes. But I still find the softness in the way his mouth quirks up only on one side when he's trying not to smile at something embarrassing like when I tell him that I love him with those three words out loud, and I wonder if I've missed too much of his life to save him; I have barely saved myself.