I can feel you fleeting
Oh the things I do to get to you
My palm pressed up against white brick
You are a great wave
and a great drought
You give and you wait
But you never take

There's been a rattling in my ribs since I met you.
My skin, paper thin.
The wind wraps itself around me the way you used to.
And when you're here, I'm see through.

She says "he's still in the jungle"
He owes her five hundred still for all the little ones.
There's an owl in a gold frame just staring at me.
And this golden poison is deep in my veins now.
My face,
slimming
puckering.
What have I done?
Who have I become?
Sat up against a brick wall.
On the back of a napkin the words bleed.
I feel queazy.
Will I bleed too?
Like pink and red roses.
She says
"I already have some"
But I have nothing and no one.
I am light.
Air.
But thick as bone.
As wood, creaking.
I can feel him.
I can feel everything.
I'm sinking.

"I practically threw my remote at the television screen after seeing Insider's depiction of the prep school **** case. Why did it matter that he was top of his class? One station said she called him an angel. And left her earrings behind. Another, a gem. All that mattered to me was that she was faceless, and afraid. That her word, her crackling deep voice, wasn't enough. Even behind a shadow, she was under a spotlight."

"My hands hurt. I have blisters on my thumbs and the sides of my feet. My back is covered in red, with the exception of two thin white lines where my blue straps lay on my shoulders. My fingers pulse and burn as I write, holding a wooden pen, gnawed and mountainous. I should stop, and sleep. But there's a churning in me. A need. So I scribble on. My thumbs throbbing"

I found myself comfortably slipping back into the skin I used to wear. When I loved a man fiercely and from afar. It was so easily, and fitting. But something was different? Perhaps it's as if I knew now, as I never did before, that this was just a gown. And that there were plenty of other gowns I could be wearing. Some of satin and lace. Some of cotton or wool. Suddenly, I realized how scratchy this skin felt. Had it always been so rough? I slipped out of the skin-and hung it up in my wall like a velvet black dress. 'Does that even fit you?' The words rang in my head. They were jarring and accusatory. I crawled into something warmer. Something new. It smelt of magic soap, the kind that came in a bottle covered in scriptures. 'This is better' I thought, with an unfamiliar grin on my face. I thought it to be odd. Even more odd that it felt genuine. 'This is much better'