I don’t know how to start this.  When I was 11 my family all piled into our old blue minivan and drove down to florida.  I remember the beach.  The waves.  Around lunch the waves got so high they’d touch the window of my bedroom back home.  They crashed almost relentlessly.  Hitting you harder and harder until all you tasted was salt.  Today was like the breath you got between waves before being shoved back under the water.  I really don’t know how to ******* start this.  When I was 4 my dad was on a business trip.  This was before my mom got ‘better’, you see. It was when she was still ‘sick.’  My baby sister was still that, just a baby.  1 I think? 2? A bottle of wine later and she’s passed out on the floor. I’m not good at writing, I’m sorry if this is choppy.  I didn’t know what to feed her, my sister.  She cried for 3 hours.  I don’t think I slept.  5 hours ago my mother cried in a doctors office as a lady whose name I can’t remember told her that my childhood was probably the cause of my issue.  It is 2 in the morning and I can still hear my mother crying from her bedroom.  I told her I have only been feeling this way for a year or so.  I have been feeling this way since I had to explain to my 2 year old sister why mummy wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon.  I have been feeling this way since a boy in third grade called my mother a ‘drunk’ on the playground I have been feeling this way since 4th grade when my mother couldn't come to the mother/daughter dance because she had AA I have been feeling this way since the first time the girl who lives next door brought up my mother and how she ‘was awful’ and how she ‘wouldn’t blame me if I hated her.’  I’ve been feeling this way since I heard my mother say that exact ******* thing 5 hours ago.  “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.”  Well that’s where you’re in luck, mother dearest.  Because that’s the thing about my little ‘problem.’  It’s not you who I’ll blame, it’ll be me.  Every night.  Every morning.  Every waking hour.  I’m so sorry.  I’m so ******* sorry.

Summer nights long forgotten filled with sticky air and ***** feet.
Nights that didnt begin until 10 pm.  
I was always the ghost when we played ghost in the graveyard,
running to the same hiding spot among the wheat every time.  
All I could hear was my breathing and their screams as they pretended to look for me and very quickly give up
I picked at grass for hours as the moon inflated and the air tricked you into thinking it was December and not August
  They would always start a bonfire and tell stories and laugh.
I have scars on my feet from running so fast down that dirt road,
always just stopping before hitting the interstate.  
I was only 10.  I still believed in belonging.

I am always the ghost on friday nights.  
Empty invites,
“come back to my place for a few drinks, my parents are out of town.  Everyone’s coming.”
Just take me home.
Please just take me home.
Don’t look at me like that.
My house is the third on the right.

The girl I made a blood pact with won’t look at me in the hallway.  
The boy I held as he cried about his father sits with a girl I know he can’t love.
I have friends, oh I have so many friends.  

We used to run through the forests like our soles were on fire.  
Little did we know soon it wouldn’t be just the skin under our feet that was burning.  
We used to pretend we had super powers.  
She used to say she could make force fields,
and I don’t doubt for a second that when she refuses dinner and goes to her room early that a force field is exactly what she has made.  
He said he was so strong he could lift buildings,
now he can’t even lift his eyelids as we make eye contact across the lunchroom.  
I said I could talk to animals and now I speak more to my dog than to my father.  
We said we had superpowers.  
Everyone has a superpower.
I don’t even have to be drunk not to feel anything.

I was voted most likely to rule the world by my class.
I didn’t even think people knew I existed.
I talk to a boy who is so far away and as he claims he will see me soon I can’t help but think the future he speaks of when he’s high is nothing but a pipe dream.
Doesn’t he know that I’m destined to rule the world?
Doesn’t he know I have superpowers?  
Doesn’t he know that on that night they forgot me 7 years ago I learned that my home wasn’t on the right?
Or the left?
Doesn’t he know that I’m lost?

First it was simply tape
He feebly tried to attach himself to my mind in attempts to make his words stick
But they never lasted long
And I would kiss him in the dark
And he would leave before the first hint of light made my eyes squint
My mother whispered about him as he came and went
My summer ghost who lived where I would let him
And I don't think it counts as love when you're not even awake for most of it
After that drunken confession I was uprooted
Free to be the wind
Winding through the holes in people's bones in an attempt to feel warm
But even the hottest of fires sometimes aren't aware of the heat they give off
He came next
With three nails and a hammer
But his father never taught him that to love a girl you must know her
And in the end it was inevitable that he would spend most our nights wondering how it could have gone better
And I know I ****** him up
He built that ladder for me with everything he had
And in the end I never came down
Because I was an ocean and he was stranded
I'm deeper than him
Deeper than his shallow pools of lustsick thinking
Now it's you
Does God know you stole from him the very substance that he used to piece me together?
Because so far you're the only thing that's stuck
And rooms aren't forests anymore
And they aren't seas or deserts
They're just rooms that I can walk across to sit down next to you
And I wish I wasn't so **** stubborn
Because when I turn my head away in the night I know deep down you wonder if it's something you did wrong
I'm not afraid to love
I'm afraid to be loved
You're like a child
Stealing candy from a store
At least that's what I told myself to make me feel better about the fact you always know when something is wrong
In reality you're just made of what I'm made of
And I'm not quite sure what that is yet
But I know with you I'll figure it out
And I know with you that all my past thoughts of love were based on how I thought I was supposed to feel
I thought I was supposed to dread the other half of me
That it was normal to cry in the fading dusk as I walked in circles wondering if I could ever bring myself to touch him
Now it's as if I can't get close enough
And every boiling morning my hands run down your back like I'm searching for a way in
Desperately clawing at doors without handles
That February morning was warm
As if the sun knew that I'd want it to last a lifetime
And you helped me down from that pedestal
Slowly
But surely
And you let me fall asleep on your lap even when I had no idea what commitment even was
With your forefinger you smudged my boundaries of friendship and love
Because like oil and water I thought all my life it was best to keep them separate
I'm Medea
And to concoct the perfect poison of all of my wishes would be suicide
It makes me laugh now
Because I drink it every night as I watch you play
Sweeter than any alcohol but I can assure you the burn is far worse
Smoother than any cigarette but I can assure you the lightheadedness that follows is more intense than that night I sat in the forest with people I barely knew the names of as I laughed to jokes I didn't understand
I love you
And I want to say that I love you
Because I know you love me
Even if those words have never left your lips
And we tease each other relentlessly
I love him
You love her
Always dancing around what we are like hot coals
I find it funny how I can write a novel simply about the way you look up when you're trying to remember something but I can't bring myself to say those three words
I think it's because I'm so used to saying them that they don't do how I feel justice anymore
Which is why people ask me why it was so easy to cut him from me
And I shrug as I hide my wire cutters behind my back
I buried my tools that night on the hill
The night I told you everything
Like I was writing it down
Except this time the paper was breathing next to me
I think everyone should have something as sharp as their wit to cut people from them
Because even though there's something so beautiful about an oak looming over you with tendrils and roots up to your knees
There's something more hopeful about a freshly planted seed
Because you can't see it
But you know it will be wonderful
And I've realized I don't need to have something beautiful to shade me
It's easy to waste the day away sat under a canopy of leaves
But to grow something is harder
And that's what we're doing
And I know it will be better than anything I've ever done before