love is a lemon now-and-later

She is thinking about him a lot lately. Waiting for December, wondering again what it will bring, wondering why that month in particular always holds this magical promise for her. Last December she wanted to kill herself. She thinks this one will be better.

Wondering if she will be less pretty or prettier than he remembers, and if his body will feel different under her hands. If they will fall in love or start anew in January. If he will have an apartment full of Bibles and other books she's never read, movies she'd never watch on her own. Wondering if that matters.

She asks, what is love? Is it the way someone makes you feel when he walks through the room where you're sitting on a couch twisting your hair? Is it knowing what he means when he says he's never been much of a poet? Or knowing and not caring if the only writing he's done is your digital exchange. If he's graduated from college, or not. What the fuck is love? It's making her angry, this debate of deserts. She considers that maybe these things keep us from love, not help us find it.

There's this song she likes that always reminds her of him. It goes if you're partial to the night sky, if you're vaguely attracted to rooftops. It's fast and light and bubbly and there is this line in it about martinis and then a line about lemon Now-and-Laters. She thinks, that's what love is. A lemon Now-and-Later. Sour, sweet, timeless. There's no reason this song should remind her of him. She's known him only two days and there was no music. It's a song someone else would have put on a mixtape for her two years ago, but that's not why she likes it.

She'll know she loves him if he tells her a story while they are naked in bed together and it doesn't seem long but she wishes it was.