Day 5

I collect scallop shells.

I read once that when you're having a bad day, it helps to carry something in your pocket to remind you of your own serenity.

All the scallop shells awkwardly weighed on the pockets of my zip-up sweatshirts, broke under their own weight and made a sound something like crunching leaves or turning the pages of a paperback...as I uncomfortably strut down the middle school hall ways

I held all these little pieces hoping the more I held onto at once, the better I'd feel but hoarding them only broke their fragile bodies and I still felt quite anxious in my own.

A girl on my bus, she is older but she is shy and her face shows signs of stress in the form of swarms of angry acne,
she looks at me like I am a flame, an entirely unpredictable element.

I think she nearly expects for me to one day deviate from my candle wick and set the school on fire.

I approach the girl, she is walking in the school courtyard and spring is blooming while she is staring at the ground, so she doesn't see me until our sneakers are looking into eachothers laces.

I say "here" as a shell emerges from the bloom of my grip, and I plant it in her palm like a flower pot

She looks at me and closes her fist around this thing, smooth and sure. The first words I ever heard her speak were "thank you"