keep my skull (on your mantelpiece)

tattwo

i knew a girl once who smelled like cherries and shampoo
it was 2nd grade and i would gaze at her in class as she wrote answers to questions about basic math
her hands sprawled across paper
beside me, she hummed
i envied her numbers and i twiddled my thumbs
as her twos did loopty-loops around the page
and her seven's were slashed down the middle
i wanted a piece of her, anything, just a little
so i forced my fingers to stop producing such homely figures
and got to work stealing her swirling scrawls
i wrote twos on my arms
i wrote twos on the walls
and i let her believe i owned them all along
i couldn't tell you her name or the brand of shampoo she used
but i can picture the pink of her lips
and i still have her twos
now my hands cannot start to form them
the other way 'round
without resembling half of a deformed heart

a/n: it was only at the age of 18 did I realize I had a crush on this girl when I recounted this instance aloud. Internalized homophobia stole something from me, but it forgot to take my curly cue twos