Hey Miss Carter: Dedication Page Made Out To You.

There is a library in my heart. Look up and down the shelves and you'll find black spines and silver spines and books about June and the nights that kept me up so late I was making lists of things I should regret but don't.

There's this one book, with the dedication page made out to you. The first chapter is about how you mispronounce "milk" and the way you laugh around the dinner table. The baggage you put on my shoulder when you give me that "sup" head nod before 3rd period. The condition you left my brain in when you read your poem for me. I think there are 2 whole pages about the embarrassing personal effect you have on me when you laugh really hard, put your head down and bring your hand to your hairline. Those pages are worn and there's a rip on the bottom left of one of them becauseI flip too fast when My hands are clammy.

I'm pretty sure it's chapter 9, the one about that one time you were showing me your favorite song. You said, "this one, it's weird, but it's my favorite". I was scared this was going to be a deal breaker, you know, if you suck at liking music. But the first cord, my pulse went up 7284729 pulses and I thought of all the ways I could kiss you right then, because it's my favorite song too. This song, it's weird, but it's our favorite.

There are pages folded down of our first kiss and our first fight is smudged from the rain I wrote it in. The time you didn't speak for 3 straight days but held my hand the entire time is written in pt. 8 font because you finally said, "I'm trying to master the expertise of silence". And I needed that to be in an unnecessarily big font.

Sometimes you're the biggest novel in the library. On display for everyone and their coffee to flip through. But other times you're a pocket sized paperback and I keep you in my back pocket.