What Ruled

June was the month where you’re embarrassed about being embarrassed, where you’re dying of thirst but nothing in the fridge is right, where your t-shirt somehow has blood on it and you stopped asking when. You’re inside when the sun’s screaming outside. The train packed with bodies, everyone sweating, everyone regretting being there. Video games suddenly more real than television. Overly sweet food tastes like a mistake in heat. That light blue bleach powder that ruins whatever you’re trying to save. Jokes that won’t die—Chuck Norris jokes, then jokes about jokes, until the joke is the format itself and nobody laughs but it keeps happening anyway.

Someone’s face. Her mouth. The whole tangled June thing of wanting to care but knowing it’s stupid, wanting to flip out but holding it back. The half-thoughts. Wanting to finally get that tattoo, to stop thinking about it and just let someone needle you with it. Coca-Cola mixed with fanta orange because sometimes the wrong thing is exactly right. Chicken nuggets at midnight straight from the cold fridge. Restaurants where you eat until you check out of time. The train ride when the destination doesn’t matter. Lying flat on grass thinking backward through summers, all the way back. Ice cream. The sky that color. One photograph you keep finding yourself looking at for no reason.

Hannah Montana coming back like a strange gift. The word Sakura for some reason. Finally not caring, just saying it and meaning it. Getting pulled into something stupid and magnificent. The plants need water. Sundays with people who stayed even though you thought they’d leave. June was all of that twisted together—things that should be separate, things worth wanting and things worth burning down, all mixed and inseparable.