Your voice wraps around me like a cocoon of remembrance. The electric pulse coursing through my veins hums with newfound contentment. Months of disconnect fade into oblivion as the procedural memory of my words sliding against yours takes over. Words flood the air with forgotten ease, alone but for the comforting crackle of static. But I will not remember a word that you say; your voice is a haze of intoxication, seeping into my every pore. Time is a myth, and nothing is real except for the soundwaves, tangible and malleable beneath my lips.

I am afraid, now more than ever, that I will not get out of here.

Everywhere I've applied is expensive as fuck. I'm afraid they won't accept me, much less give me tens of thousands of dollars. My parents don't even want me to leave in the first place; they certainly won't want to pay fifty grand for me to live a thousand miles away.

And hell, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, staying here. I'd be with my family, friends I've known for years. It'd be a familiar place, and I could still work with all the people I love. I'd even have the chance to renew the relationship I know I shouldn't still long for.

But I've wanted this for so long, naively though it may have been, and I know I'll be disappointed in myself if I give it up. Even if going away for college means finding out that Memphis is actually the best place I could hope to live, at least I'll have tried. So often am I too afraid to attempt what I aspire to; this is the biggest decision in my life so far, and for once I don't want to back down from it. This sounds cliche as hell, but I just want to experience the world. That does not entail staying in the same damn place I've lived my entire life. I want to go somewhere new, be surrounded by strangers, and force myself to make friends, have fun, and fucking change. I want college to be everything that it's romanticized into being.

Either way, I'm sure that I'd be happy wherever. I'm easy to please, and I can get along with most anyone. I'll probably end up working at Starbucks no matter what school I go to. I just don't want to regret the path that takes me there.

I miss the feel of warm, calloused fingers entwined with mine. The pressure of those fingers tracing my hipbones, venturing into the nerve that makes me writhe with uncontrollable laughter.
I miss curling into the angles of your body, trying to fit together like the mismatched pieces of a puzzle.
I miss the resistance of skin between my teeth, the feel of strong tendons giving beneath me.
I miss smooth skin under my fingers, my lips.
I miss warmth, curling all around me, enveloping me.
I miss recognizing my own soul reflected back at me from endless brown irises.
I miss the ceaseless hum resonating beneath my skin, the innate ease of sliding an arm around a waist.
I miss knowing where I belong.

Rarely did I dream of you when you were still within my grasp. Now that you've fallen through it, your ghosts haunt me nightly. I wake up with the crushing joy of belonging, only to remember. What's funny is that these subconscious fantasies of mine aren't even tales of reunited love, but just of being. We never even kiss, but we're together.

But it is just this simple state of togetherness being wrenched away from me, again and again, that makes my entire body ache with loss.
I lure myself to sleep every night with thoughts of other boys, praying that it will be them I dream of. I want to forget, because I have no other choice. I fall asleep enveloped in your shirts, hugging the puppy you gave me, and hoping that I will forget you.

And people wonder why I sleep so much.