Leap days are magic, she whispered, and I still catch her words entangled in my hair eleven years later. I remember promising we wouldn’t date anybody unless we were in love with them, which is a pretty great way to live through elementary and middle school, but there is something about your freshman year of high school that re-opens old wounds and makes you walk down the halls naked no matter how strong you’d always been before, something that makes you forget it’s wrong to be sweet-talked into doing something you have zero interest in and something that gives Taylor Swift pretty damn good reason to write a song and let other ghost-girls know they’re not alone.
So today I remember that best friend from fourth grade who showed me how to braid my hair and started my love of soccer and taught me the silliest words she knew in Spanish. And today I forget all the shameful things I did without her and all the mud I made myself walk through even though we promised each other we’d always dance in the rain like we did outside Kim’s house before her grandmother yelled at us to come inside. Today is magic.
light night 