Blue Vinyl and Menthol

I will always remember the vague vibration of your muffled engine pulling into the driveway. The way your deflated tires met the gravel with resistance as I struggled into my tattered hooded sweatshirt.

I listened for any reaction from my parents...
As if they would have cared at all anyways...

And I'd silently close the back door behind me.


I'd have to climb in through the driver's side and push away all of the debris of magazines and empty CD cases, water bottles and fast food wrappers, to find my place next to the morning- misted window.

You'd slip the car into reverse and I'd light up a cigarette as you turned on the headlights.


I will always remember the scent of your blue vinyl and my menthol cigarettes.
The way I will never really forget how your clothes would be wrinkled and your hair would always be wet- so, of course, you never wanted me to play with it. 
Always afraid I would somehow mess it all up.

But, you know, I never even really cared how you looked.
I don't know why I really would...

I could only think about how skinny I was.
Because no matter what...
It was never enough.


So I just kept smoking those Marlboro Menthols in the passenger seat of your "borrowed" car and we drove around listening to the radio; singing along to all of the stupid songs we still know- by heart.

We'd pull over somewhere else and we thought we were really sharing ourselves in the only way we were shown how- but looking back, I don't know what I had been thinking now. It's just those humid summer hormones, adolescents without given boundaries, and you know everyone is really just starving for...
I think what they call love.
Or if that's a little too much commitment-
Most of us would simply settle for the attention.


I know I loved the way you said "I Love You".
You know, Like  you seemed to really mean it.
I still don't really know-
If you ever did.

And after it was over, I'd straighten my strawberry lip gloss, and I'd pick up my lighter. You'd brush the hair away from my eyes and ask me why I'd ever want to really kill myself this way. And I'd always say the same thing:

Live Fast. Die Pretty.

It was my slogan that summer.


And Even Though it may be over-
I'll always always remember...
Your Blue Vinyl and My Menthol.