Some days I talk to you with my head instead of my mouth.
As endless jokes slide between my teeth
I tell you
I wish smiling didn’t come so easy.
I know you slide safety pins into the corners of your lips and through the tops of your cheeks
before walking through my door.
You always reach for me, fingers curling round my own
intertwining
so our fingers look like a tall picket fence standing between us and our palms.
I wonder
do you hold my hand like you would your own,
begging your younger self to stumble away — on foot, because your wings were still too small to fly on —
in any direction that wasn’t towards home
instead of giving her the key
and letting her lock you away
leaving you to batter hopelessly against
the confines of your rib cage,
wings no longer small
but cut
some by her hand,
some by yours held (lovingly) (hatefully) in her own?
I wonder
if your pulse between my fingers
is from your screaming begging tearing heart,
or the sound of you hitting the walls
of your confine time and time again
like a bird hitting a blacked-out window
because it knew it used to be clear.
Once, you let go of my hand
held me in a chokehold
until I tapped out minutes too soon
and I wonder
were your hands itching, hurting, begging
to feel the softness of your throat
the way your fingers would press
into hollows formed by a year’s worth of work
but you couldn’t, you couldn’t
not with your safety-pin smile
so you did the next best thing
and laughed your post-it note laugh
one prepared from hours of late-night YouTube tutorials
that you watched as you drowned in the smell of your home
and you reached for me,
held me in the way she taught you to hold
even as you hated yourself
hated her
hated the her that was yourself,
the yourself that was her and was hers
for listening to the lessons
she recites with her hands.
9/9/2022