To the little girl on the train with the corkscrew curls

That greying white pillow with the head and tail of a cat sewn on, occasional stitch popped, is the first taste you’ll have of unconditional love.

 As you twist its darkened tail around your little finger and slip your thumb into your mouth, you don’t realize the value of this comfort. When he breaks your heart, when she leaves you confused and bereft, you will clutch a grown-up pillow, headless, down one heart-shaped nose and pink triangle whiskers. You’ll sob into its high cotton thread count and you won’t know that the ache in your chest is actually a longing for dirty plush against your cheek and the smell of a city and your mother threaded among worn-out fibers. You’ll forget this kind of contentedness.

 You won’t remember that all you had to do was look a stranger in the eye in order to make her smile at everything you actually are, free of contrivance and social graces. You won’t know the power your brown eyes, squinted in a smile bereft of fear and insecurity, have on that stranger. You won't know you made her crave the taste of everything trapped beneath the curve of a thumbnail, tongue-smoothed.