Misplaced Nostalgia

She was the kind of girl who always felt that she had a great deal to say, could never quite find the words to say it. Grand, vague ideas and hypnotically hazy sentiments glimmered in the dark, bumping and crashing and blurring together at the edges until they left her hopeless, drained and exhausted from an age-old attempt to etch the stars behind her eyelids into letters to no one.
I was the kind of boy who was effortlessly, horrifically adept at the art of the soapbox. I felt, at the age of thirteen, that after a long and horrifically complex journey I knew what I wanted to be: liked. Talent didn't factor into it, ability wasn't important- I had long since overcome the urge for meaning, and though I ached to be artistic, I settled with noisy.
And that, in the end, was all that mattered. She carried them with her like a secret- all those perfect words strangled in her knotted vocal cords- and I knew I was the only one who could pick that lock. After all, I was the sort of person who could teach her to talk, and she was the sort of person who could teach me to speak.