Yesterday, I asked a boy what we were.

Today, he replied: “I think we are friends.”

I cried.

Not the pretty, single-tear kind. The silent, hunched on my bed, facing the wall, headphones-on-so-I-wouldn’t-have-to-explain-to-my-roomies-that-I-was-crying-over-a-boy kind. 

A patch of tears darkened my pillowcase. 

Last month, at this same time, it was the waffles. The waffle man at the cafeteria had told me there were waffles—and then, after I’d placed my order—that there weren’t.

Two months ago, it was the lipstick. I’d applied it for an outing, but it looked wrong. I’d spent the entire day asking friends who reassured me with pitying eyes. “You look good,” they said.

When I came back, I fell asleep with the lipstick on, my eyes red and swollen.

Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have cried at his reply.

I would have said “Nice,” with a smiley next to it and moved on to other topics. I would have smiled at him the next day without analysing his smile. When my friends teased me, I would have said “He’s my friend,” and meant it.

Two weeks from now, my gut will still twist at the sight of him. But we’ll talk and I won’t think of the sweat under my collar. We’ll laugh at our silly jokes and I won’t think if my breath smells.

A month from now, I’ll be crying over something else. Probably a broken pencil.

Blossom Odor is a writer and poet from Nigeria, currently studying Medicine and Surgery at Afe Babalola University. Writing as Blossom, she works in poetry and prose poetry — excavating memory, grief, and the complicated interior lives of people who love imperfectly and are loved imperfectly in return. She has been writing since she was fifteen and hasn’t been able to stop. Her work is forthcoming in Aorta Lit Mag, Issue 5.