things

you say you like how i'm cute, but
i swear you take the most unattractive
pictures of me i have ever seen. then you
tell me i'm gorgeous and you kiss me in the
back of the car twelve times so you can get the
picture right. you're always criticizing yourself.

the truth is i have no idea who you really are.
you could be an astronaut or an ax murderer and i
would just smile and go along with it and smile pretty
for the camera. kiss you twenty times if it would make you
happy. you don't smile as much as you used to, but when you do
i swear it makes me feel like i could be a star among the clouds.

i think you're a jigsaw puzzle. i mean, secretly, underneath
everything else, you live in a cardboard box and you just want to
be solved. my grandma gets thousand-piece puzzles, the pieces so tiny
you can lose them by blinking. somehow she always puts them all together.
then she takes a picture and frames it, putting the pieces back in the box
for some other day. some other person can solve the puzzle; she's figured it all out.

i've never understood a thing she's tried to tell me.