You Between the Lines

by Katie Naymon

I love reading, I swear. But I’ve never been able to sink my teeth into these lauded literary classics—the ones written by men, the ones set in wartime, with stream of consciousness as their stylistic mode of choice, the poverty and depression of men as their focus. Give me Brontë, Austen, Lorde. John Steinbeck, though? Ralph Waldo Emerson? I’m good.

That’s the problem with me. I constantly read the room and cater my movements, words, thoughts, which-comma-goes-where to other people.

“How do you know when you’re good at something?” “When someone else tells me I’m good at it. Is that bad?”

I can’t write a single poem where you don’t exist.

Being Will’s enemy was hard. Being his friend, if you could call it that, was harder. But being his nothing is maybe worst of all.

“How can I get this out of my system? I want to do everything with you.”

You have always been the brightest thing in the room and I have never not wanted to be in your spotlight.”