Buck Rogers & Curly Sue. (Prose for Apt. 3)

You used to be my first call.

Not because you always knew what to say, but because you never acted like I needed to say anything at all.

A few long strides down the driveway and I could be on your bedroom floor, face turned toward the ceiling fan, watching it carve slow circles through the dark while you moved around me like I belonged there.

You would step over my ankles without breaking conversation, folding laundry, checking your phone, half-listening to some Buck Rogers video playing tinny through the speakers, and somehow that was enough to quiet every terrible thing in my head.

I remember thinking that love must look different than people say it does.

Maybe it looks like this: someone making space for your body without making you apologize for its existence.

Because I was always in the way.

Stretched across the carpet. Blocking drawers. Leaning against counters. Occupying space like a misplaced object left somewhere it shouldn't have been.

And still, you never sighed. Never asked me to move. Never made me feel like something cumbersome you had to work around.

You just stepped over me gently and kept talking.

God, what a devastating thing that was.

To realize the thing calming me down wasn't your advice, or your voice, or even your touch—

it was the feeling of not being treated like a burden for one goddamn second.

The phone I have now

doesn’t even know your name.

And sometimes I wonder—

who’s blocking your dresser drawers now?