How to Go on Vacation With a Girl Who Wants to Break Up With You//Molly Weisgrau

Notice the way each of her vertebrae smiles through her skin as she curls into sleep.

Do not curl around her. Wonder if, instead, you could interlock your spines like the stack of lincoln logs that you played with at your grandmother’s house in a heavy wooden room just like this one. Wonder if, together, you would make a shape like a butterfly. Or a ginkgo leaf.

When she takes your hand as you walk down the street, don’t pull away. Try not to notice the peeling edge of the callus on her second knuckle. Forget the way that her hands stay cool even as the temperature slithers from balmy to blazing. Yours are sweaty regardless.

If she doesn’t speak first, talk about the mountains. How their red fingers tickle the sky. Talk about the pizza you shared last night. How the basil leaves were so fresh you could taste the chlorophyll bursting with every bite. Remind her about the cafe you visited yesterday. How they sold cellophane sachets of tiny temporary tattoos that you meant to apply but forgot.

Don’t talk about what happens after you go home. You’ll watch them crumb off your skin in one place. She will in another.

Yesterday at sunrise you stood on the crackling edge of the reservoir and gazed through her camera’s little aperture. Everything – the water, the bush, the sky, was green. With the press of the shutter, your finger smudged onto the lens. You flicked the dial. One shot left.

When you walk through the antique store with the old beaded jackets and taxidermy displays of squirrels and bats under glass domes, she’ll hand you a pendant and say this reminds me of you. It’s a piece of cloudy resin entrapping a forget-me-not.

Do I seem blue? You want to ask.

Smile as you take it. Say you’re right. Thank you.

Molly Weisgrau is a writer from Lawrence, Kansas. She is currently finishing her MFA from Oregon State University, where she is also managing editor of the literary magazine 45th Parallel. Her work has been featured in Hobart, Waif Magazine, The Dodge, and elsewhere. This is her first poetry publication. Read more at mollyweisgrau.com