“hi, i’m wolf” his eyes were silver. the silvered-eyed boy with brown skin.

i remember this. i remember him, the way his tongue would fiddle with his silver lip-ring on the right side of his mouth. the silver pointed studs that hooked through his left eyebrow.

the way he said my name.

i was always “carnage” from where i came. i wasn’t named that, no. but they would say it anyway, just to see if i would flinch. if i fell for it, they would follow with “you break everything you touch”.

if i fell for that?

that was why my blood was usually the one running down the sink on those nights.

“your name isn’t carnage, really? you don’t look like someone who could hurt that many souls.” my eyes fell away from his, ashamed. “tell me you don’t believe that, little lamb”

so that became my new name.

I used to tell myself that I could put you out of my brain without a second thought, to make room for things more “important”, as though you can be compared to last week’s AP history test answers.

Now, I can’t sleep without 10 mg of Melatonin coursing through my veins, following the same path that your touch once took. I wash dishes once, twice, three times, scrubbing harder and harder every time your name passes through my head. All it takes is to hear one syllable of your name; “Did you lock the car?”, “Pay the meter fee!”, and I am gripping the nearest surface with white knuckles.

When I sit in the library, I sometimes allow myself to watch your boney hands through a crack in the office. They are long and thin, with a slight purple tint. They wring with stress that you are now so used too, I bet you don’t even notice it anymore. They move swiftly, as though they have minds of their own. Sometimes, they will hover over an object, a slight uncertainty visible to those who take time to notice. Then they are back to the wringing. How do I know they are yours? Good god, how I wish I could forget.



-I couldn’t go any longer without writing about you