You're speaking to me and it's like watching a spool of unraveling madness. Every word you say is calculated, every inflection manipulative, every gesture intended to be persuasive. And yet it's utter insanity.

I smile and nod, because damn it, I'm a nice girl. But I'm not a stupid one.

Nice guys don't need to convince girls they're nice. Nice guys don't dictate to nice girls how we should perceive them.

Nice guys ask questions. Nice guys listen. Nice guys care, consistently and unwaveringly.

They're not here one second and then gone with the wind. They don't build you up just to knock you back down. They don't thrive on your confusion. They don't take advantage of your giving spirit.

I may be a nice girl, but here's what I'm not:

I'm not someone you can just fold up in the palm of your hand and place in your pocket to pull out whenever you need. I'm not a candle that you can just blow out the second you no longer desire my light. I'm not a hammock for you to lay your weight on when your legs get tired of carrying around your bullshit.

Because here's the thing; I'm a nice girl who will always be nice to myself first.

I'm sick of being your weekday girl. I get it, I'm just a Monday and she's a Saturday, but maybe that's because you've never even tried to open the valve that's currently clogging my heart.

I refuse to chase you, or hunt you down and frankly, I'm not looking for you to save me either.

I have imaginary memories of you caring about my words and the way my eyes light up when I talk. Except that was all just a part of your sycophantic nightmare. The one where you told me to kiss you and as I leaned forward you pushed a dagger right through my guts.

I sometimes think that the repetitious cycle of someone pretending to care about you one day, and the very next, acting as though you don't even exist, must be the worst kind of abuse.

Nothing hurts like that.

Well anyways, you're wrong. I'm not a Monday. I'm the whole damn week.

It's one in the morning and my ribcage is cracking open from the bass hitting me straight on. Your arms are holding it together, which is good because I feel as though my heart might beat right out of my chest.

You'd never been somewhere like this. The heat, the sweat, the beer, the anger. You'd never seen anything like it.

This is where I grew up, surrounded by loud, dizzying music and fists flying through the air. Everyone here is ugly and strange and unkempt, but our bodies all melt into one single force, that swirls and jilts across the room.

And standing here in the middle of this ruckus, with you, I feel the most still I have ever felt. My feet are firmly planted to the floor and nothing can move me.

Stillness in the middle of chaos is the strangest feeling. For once I feel in control of my fate and honestly, it scares me. So I turn around and shove you into the surging mass of bodies and watch you disappear. When your fate is in your palms, sometimes the only thing you can do is throw it away.

I get knocked to the floor and a grin hatches across my face. Perfect.

...

I just remember the autumn breeze and the way the leaves crunched under our feet. I found that one leaf that was massive and pinned it to my bulletin board before we finally collapsed in my room. You said I was weird.

Maybe it meant something when that leaf finally crumbled away and fell to the floor. I mean, it probably meant everything.

I think that I probably live my life like that. I bloom in the spring, I manage to look and smell pretty. And then I level out in the summer, when we lay on sand covered beach towels, soaking up the sun and I stop bothering to even try and untangle my hair, or your arms from my waist.

But when fall comes I crash. And I crash hard. By winter I've turned to dust and I know I have a hell of a long time until I even exist again. And by then I will no longer be pinned to your heart. I'll have crumbled away and the tiny pinhole I left there will have already healed over.

I guess you were right, I am weird. Or at least I feel that way since I've realized I have no permanence.