Teen Crush

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
I walked past his locker eleven times
In one afternoon
And each time
I had a reason
The first time was geography
Because his locker was near the stairs
And the stairs
Were a legitimate destination
The second time was a dropped pencil
Which I dropped on purpose
Near enough to his locker
To justify the proximity
But far enough
To maintain
What I believed
Was plausible deniability
The third through eleventh times
I don't remember the reasons
Because by the third time
My prefrontal cortex
Had surrendered the budget
To whatever department
Was responsible
For walking past lockers
And the department
Had unlimited funding
And no oversight
[Pre-Chorus]
I was fifteen
And I already knew
The names of every bone in the hand
And I could not
For the life of me
Figure out what to do
With my own hands
When he looked at me
My hands became
The most awkward objects
I had ever owned
I put them in my pockets
I took them out
I crossed my arms
I uncrossed them
I held a book
Like the book
Was the reason
I had hands
[Chorus]
L'amour d'ado, l'amour d'ado
The love that made me stupid on purpose
L'amour d'ado, l'amour d'ado
I knew every bone in the hand
And could not operate a single one
I walked past his locker
Eleven times
And each time
I was a worse actress
And each time
He didn't notice
Which was
Simultaneously
The worst thing
And the only thing
Keeping me alive
[Verse 2]
I developed a strategy
I called it
The Peripheral Strategy
Which was
Be in his peripheral vision
As often as possible
Without ever being
In his direct line of sight
The theory was
If I existed
At the edge of his attention
For long enough
I would become
A fact of his environment
Like the water fountain
Or the clock
And eventually
He would turn toward me
The way you eventually
Look at a clock
Not because you decided to
But because it was always there
The strategy failed
He never looked at the clock
The clock
Went home every day
At three fifteen
And wrote in a journal
About the specific way
He opened his locker
Which was with his left hand
And a slight kick
To the bottom corner
Because the lock
Was broken
And the kick
Was the most beautiful thing
The clock had ever seen
And the clock
Was me
And the journal
Was evidence
Of a mind
That would one day
Study the brain
Already failing
To study its own
[Bridge]
My amygdala
Was doing things
I would not have the vocabulary for
Until graduate school
The threat detection system
Had reclassified a seventeen-year-old boy
With a broken locker
As a source of danger
Equal to a bear
And my cortisol
Agreed with the assessment
And my cortisol
Was not wrong
Because the boy
Was in fact
Exactly as dangerous
As a bear
To a girl
Who had a plan
For everything
Except this
[Outro]
I never spoke to him
He moved
The next semester
To a school
I could not walk past
Eleven times
And the locker
Was assigned
To someone else
And I walked past it once
The new person's locker
And felt nothing
Which was the first data point
In what would become
A career
In understanding
Why the brain
Does the things
It does
When it has
No reason
And every reason
And a hallway
And a pair of hands
It has forgotten
How to use