Sometimes I can't fall asleep. I wonder if my brain is physically incapable of shutting off; if the thoughts constantly running round my head and through my arms to my shaking fingers and twitching legs have anything to do with her. I think I was a little bit in love with her, to be honest-- if a fourth grader can be in love. I looked at the yellow spots on her teeth and saw a beautiful birthmark- distinguishing the interesting from the dull and the good from the evil. I observed her frizzy, black hair and deemed it noteworthy to the highest extent, and although I don't remember it, I'd be lying if I said I had never dreamt of kissing her. She was so beautiful to me-- an enigma wrapped in a conundrum with a side of a heightened, fourth grade quandary.

The online counseling center of the University of Illinois defines an emotionally abusive relationship as “brain washing that systematically wears away at the victim’s self-confidence, sense of self-worth, trust in their own perceptions, and self-concept.” I'm not quite sure if I'd label a questionable elementary school friendship as emotionally abusive, but looking back, I could never really figure out what bonded us together other than mothers who enjoyed sewing and a mutual lack of trust. Her deficiency was in herself. I was just cement to fill the gaps.

Currently, my chest feels constricted and my hands are shaking like the revolution inside them hasn't yet been won, and neither the rebels nor the authorities can remember what or who they're fighting for. I think it's the caffeine that set it off, but I wouldn't put it past her to inject the cement with poison and shove it back down my throat like medicine. Maybe that's why I've been having trouble breathing.

Last night, I forgot to brush my teeth. I'm not sure if it was because I forgot or because the long term effects of my iron deficiency finally kicked in. The cement hasn't yet hardened enough to fill the cracks.

The waitress sends signals in neon code,
through Christmas illuminations stretching across
the car-park, and straight into my ***** orange.

She laughs through awkward platitudes,
and all the beards that comment on her skirt.
She's working to make a living,
somewhere down the line.

I watch as she scribbles poetry on old receipts,
eyes glossing over the ketchup stains,
and into the passing of the moment.

I hope that she is writing of escape;
of better times and better sleep.
She will smash the glass ceiling,
and save us from the greenhouse effect.

Baritone singers lure her into art,
into the promise of soft-hearted men
with a resilient chest.

The waitress waits for a signal
to restart her life. There will be flares
on the horizon, there will be new lovers
leaning on their cars in the sun.

She will finally get to sit.
She will thank the waiter for her drink.

The security guard was walking through the courtyard yelling. Lockdown mode. That’s what they do when someone has a gun. When people could die. When your school is on the news and everyone sends your family flowers and homemade lasagna. When I feel an anxiety attack coming, twitching my hands usually helps me calm down. As we were ushered into the auditorium by teachers with faces like a funeral, I didn’t feel the need to move my fingers from where they held one strap of my backpack to my shoulder. I wasn’t sure I could move them at all.

When you read a book about a school shooting, they always talk about the chaos. Kids running away from the unstable teenager with a gun, teachers trying to make sense of the disarray, wondering which window you could safely jump out of. They don’t tell you about the waiting. They don’t tell you about the graveness of the teachers’ faces as they ask you to be quiet. They don’t tell you how a tiny corner of the blackness lifts when your friend texts back. They don’t tell you how you will not stop staring at the door that leads directly to the parking lot, wondering when it will burst open with a crash, a bang, and the color red.

I stared at the stage lights still left on from drama class. I rested my muted white converse on the seat in front of me, then vaguely wondered if a teacher would get angry at me for dirtying a chair while teenagers and adults alike sat wondering who wouldn’t get to go home that day. A girl I’d known since second grade texted me and said her algebra teacher barricaded the door with an old, orange bookshelf. Three flights of stairs between us. My friend told her mom she loved her. Too many miles between them. I thought about my dog, sleeping at home on a green blanket filled with holes. I couldn’t remember the last thing I said to my mom that morning. I couldn’t remember the last time I said “I love you.”

When I read the books, I didn’t realize how scared I’d be. I didn’t realize that my throat would close up like the eye of a tornado and the rock in my stomach would double in size every time the teacher got a message on his radio. When I read the books, I wanted to know if everything would be alright. I turned each page with the raw, nervous energy I was so interested in reading about. But as I sat between my friends on the auditorium seats that were now much too red, I didn't want to know what would happen next. I wanted to grab my friends and run away from the red of the seats that could so easily be echoed in all of their faces a moment too late. As my shaking fingers tapped out a rhythm on my phone, the reassurances from three floors up and the anxiety bombarding me from all angles mixed with the clanking sounds from behind the stage to create a bloodshot mind uncertain of its actuality.

When I was seven, my best friend and I used to dress up and have tea parties. We wore the torn, hand-me-down dresses from my cousins like they were gowns straight out of a princess’s wardrobe, and we were beautiful. We would prance around my room with purple plastic teacups, and there was no better place to dine than the blue **** carpet from Goodwill.

When I was seven I wanted to be a dancer. Not just a ballerina, no. I wanted to do everything. I watched with rapt attention as my cousin’s modern class tumbled to the floor of the stage, and as I stared at their neon colored tank tops and black jazz pants, it seemed that my world made sense. It seemed that as long as I was there on stage, dancing with the same skill and emotion and passion, I would be beautiful.

For my eighth birthday, my friend gave me the sixth Harry Potter book. My favorite character was Hermione. At recess, we would tie the sleeves of our red uniform sweaters around our necks and run around the blacktop pretending to play Quidditch. I thought Harry was smart and cunning and funny, but Hermione. Hermione was full of enthusiasm and rules and always made friends even if they were only in her head. She was top of her class with hair that everyone noticed and her brain was bigger than her group of friends at lunch and that was okay because she was like me. I never thought Hermione was beautiful. She didn’t need to be. Her bushy hair was full of intelligence and her buck teeth were strong enough to bite off the tongues of her oppressors and her dull, brown eyes weren’t dull at all because even the Whomping Willow began as a patch of dirt.

Hermione wasn’t beautiful like a garden. Her fiery eyes were dancing with flames that could wipe out an entire forest without even breaking a sweat. I have never wanted to be beautiful like a garden or the sunlight on the Fourth of July. As I tumble onstage in a blue dress with a tear in the front, my feet are ***** and my palms are sweaty and not one girl has brushed her hair. Footsteps pound the floor like a mighty pride of lions and hearts race as the bass drops and I am not a garden. Don’t you dare call me beautiful.

Sometimes I think I’m crumbling from the inside out. I can feel a parasite knawing at the coffin encasing my soul and exposing the pretense of overconfidence for what it truly is- dust.

There was a time when a smile from a man on the street made me feel special. Now it tenses my muscles and knocks on the bedroom door of fight and flight. If it came down to it, I know that acceptance would win.

I once saw a TV special about how coffins are becoming larger and larger because of obesity. When I was eleven, my brain was overweight with the awareness of the novel I would write and the ballet company I would star in. Lately, the obesity of my dreams is directly related to the size of the graveyard residing in my brain like an icy sea frozen mid-breath.

My best friend hurts herself because she doesn't think she’s pretty. I renounced my faith a long time ago, but I always pray that she won’t be among the one in four women who are ***** because a man told them they were pretty.

The leering, drunken man outside the movie theater built my coffin. The disease of his hand stroking my shoulder put out the fire in my brain like malaria kills 1.2 million people each year. Like the 1,871 American women who were sexually assaulted today. My skin still crawls where he touched me and my mind still recoils when I catch myself wondering if my oversized sweater and Converse sneakers were too provocative.

the hours rise up putting off stars and it is
dawn
into the street of the sky light walks scattering poems

on earth a candle is
extinguished     the city
wakes
with a song upon her
mouth having death in her eyes

and it is dawn
the world
goes forth to ****** dreams….

i see in the street where strong
men are digging bread
and i see the brutal faces of
people contented hideous hopeless cruel happy

and it is day,

in the mirror
i see a frail
man
dreaming
dreams
dreams in the mirror

and it
is dusk    on earth

a candle is lighted
and it is dark.
the people are in their houses
the frail man is in his bed
the city

sleeps with death upon her mouth having a song in her eyes
the hours descend,
putting on stars….

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems