I walk into the room.
The music fades.
My breath fills in the silence.
No noise cuts through the haze.
Our eyes catch across the ballroom.
One touch is all it takes.
My heart cautions to be careful...
My minds already made.

My eyelids seem
to be the strongest part of me.
When the rest of my body
falls
into the ocean
of blankets they
float open upon the white water
atop
the waves of sleep.
This is when you come back.
In this mattress I am a piece
of clay and I can still feel the deep indentations of where your fingers
wrapped themselves like Ivy around my hips.
Hips, that stuck out like white flags of surrender and
fell to the ground in a straight line.
I can still hear
you.
I am a broken record,
and your whispers are the only track that plays at this hour.
“You are fat”
“Look at how flat you are Emma, no boy will ever look at you.”
“You are ugly.”
These are the nights when I can
feel the spiderwebs your words wrapped around my ribs and
listen to the way my heart beats constricted
in its cage, your hand still clenched around it.
Can’t you see me bleeding?
Safety lies
beneath my eyelids but you pull them open
I can feel
your icy touch behind my eyes as I stare
coldly at the ceiling.
you demand to be heard.
Did you mean to put your words
in my pocket when you reached in to steal the sleep that was nestled there like crumpled dollar bills?
Do you realize that you stayed with me?
Can you take your stolen midnight hours back and place them on your pillowcase?
Will your eyelids close?
Or can you still hear my cries of protest as your soundtrack plays into the night?
I don't understand?
Did you think it wouldn't hurt me?
Or did you want to live forever,so you put your
fingerprints where you knew they wouldn't fade.