The Indicator x The Student: “the breakfast date (break, fast!)”

before i earned my driver’s license

before i learned to swerve down narrow city streets—

i fell

i fell in love with the existentialists’ sooty prose

peering into an opium abyss and seeing my reflection in obsidian and

                          when i returned home,

                     it smelled like cinnamon and soap

before i earned my too-small hips

before i learned to sever kisses from promises —

i fell

i fell in love with my friend’s soft touch

swaddling the valley of my waist and pressing lips in primordial warmth and

                           when she and i slept,

                    nightlights looked like newborn stars

dancing through L’Étranger to the rhythm of prickly smirks

i wash down heartburn with chamomile tea

with college-issued-carpeting under my feet

i don’t know much except

camus was a dick

and at some point i took a one-way ticket to someplace

my dad would have called “the real world”

quietly weeping into his steak dinner

                            up across the table

                         there is the love of my life

                       framed by noontime and neon

                             waffles and lattes

          there is nothing left to yearn for

when i go back to chicago

where lakeshore drive is bleary and damp

i will hide between skyscrapers like velveteen shadows

waiting for my friend’s parents to leave the room

but for now our chests rise and fall as

we match the pulse of

railroads and teslas

marking time

the oscillation between half-life and almost-death

what was it like to hold my breath for so long that

i felt dizzy

for that boundless, choking moment

when i believed i would live forever?