I'm your favorite because I am in love

The results are in. My English class voted my poem as the best in the class. Here is my edited version:

Our Parents Keep Telling Us to Grow Up

Lying flat
on our backs staring at my ceiling satisfied
us more

than anything. In my high school bedroom
listening to Say Anything on my CD player
thinking we owned the town and talking about how


sweaty your hands were. Sounds like our love
story. Football towns
in the Upper Peninsula weren't ready


for our forces. Nowhere
provided the alternate
paths we craved.

Maybe not ending up at UW-Marinette
or with babies or as a hairstylist or in Green Bay like everyone else
was our only goal


Until I grew up,
I didn't realize how much cold
air I wanted to breathe or how


fast I forgot my sister's voice
and why calling Kalamazoo "home" caused my parents
to correct me. When I grew up,


we were both on our backs
exhausted with the burdens of growing up
that held us back. Knowing

that nobody but
us would know that living eight hours away from home seemed glamorous as highschoolers, but was harder than it seemed---and made it difficult to admit to people that we almost broke up my freshman year because I couldn’t handle long distance---after everyone talked about how “cool” we were for doing it.