He changed his profile picture.

He switched it to one with his head thrown back in laughter; his mouth is wide open, his eyes are dancing, and I can see the little cross chain he wears around his neck clutched in between his fingers. His shirt says Obey on it in bold red letters. I can’t help but wonder who or what the shirt is telling to obey, or if he is telling the world to obey, or if the shirt is the hand crushing my skull telling me to obey.

I don’t know. All I know is that he changed his profile picture.

He changed his profile picture, but he cannot talk to me.

It takes eight clicks to change a profile picture to one of you laughing in a shirt that has the word Obey splayed across it; It takes four to tell a brown haired girl sitting at home, most likely crying, that you care about her.

Maybe it’s a little too much to ask.

He works at the supermarket two towns over bagging groceries for suburban housewives who peaked when they were in high-school, but still wear yoga pants to remind them of their glory days. Sometimes he’ll glance over to see if he can see their thongs peeking out from the top, but he usually can’t. He doesn’t like bagging groceries; he says he feels like a slave.

His mom is a beauty, but cut her bangs when she was feeling daring and sexy one day and now regrets it whenever she looks in the mirror. Her husband tells her she looks ridiculous, but there’s nothing she can do about it but wait until they grow out again. It’ll be a few months until then.

He likes Macklemore and Eminem; he says they’re deep, and he’s deep, so it’s good. He plays them quietly in his car, not like the other teenage boys who put the base down low and roll down their windows like thugs. He always keeps his windows up because he likes everything to be as noiseless as possible.

He grows a beard every once in a while that nobody, including him, really likes. It’s itchy and uncomfortable, and it’s a real pain to shave off. When his mom gets around to telling him he looks like a slob and needs to get rid of it, he will, but he’ll cut his cheek and curse at himself for being such a dumbass. Which, by the way, he is not.

He likes pictures of me in my swimsuit, and he likes to run his fingers through my hair that is constantly changing colors, and he likes to fall asleep in my arms.

His grades are less than exceptional, and he says he might go to college if he feels like it, but his parents didn’t go, so why should he? If he applied himself, he could have a chance at being accepted. But we both know he probably wont get around to trying.

He likes to sing, and he’s good at it. He also likes to play the piano, but he hasn’t in a while because he’s been busy with more important activities, like smoking marijuana in the school parking lot and kissing girls that aren’t me.

He changed his profile picture.

But he cannot talk to me.