There is a snack size container of peanut butter sitting in the pantry
And I'm sitting across the room but I can feel it's weight as acutely as my own
I checked the package three times, hoping the numbers would change when i returned
282
282
282 calories
I'm having a panic attack over a snack because the one thing I crave more than anything else in the world is the sticky, nutty taste of JIF brand peanut butter of which I am undeserving

My grandmother loved peanut butter
So much that they had to hide it from her if they wanted any hope of a satisfactory sandwich
My mom hid food too
Stole it like kiss after kiss
Sneaking cookies from the houses where she babysat
Getting crumbs on her swelling chest in the dark embrace of her teenage bedroom
A buffet for one
And now I'm in my grandmothers house
Hoping that there's peanut butter in heaven
Because here there's just photographs and the lingering scent of her Chanel number 5 perfume

Like mother, like daughter, like granddaughter they say
You can trace my family line as easily as the stretch marks that litter our bodies
But I am breaking the cycle by falling into my own
I have learned that hunger pangs are better than the climbing figures on the scale
So I lift a glass of water to my lips
And I leave the peanut butter in the pantry so no one will ever have to hide food from me

I've always had itchy feet
Never can sit still
Or let the soles of my shoes fuse to the ground

I keep my home around my neck
Wear it in a golden heart shaped locket
I misplaced my compass but never lost myself

I crave the ground passing beneath my feet
Beneath wheels and airplane shadows
I measure my age in miles acquired

I've seen the Milky Way from every angle
And swam in every sea
I keep going, going, going
And I never stop to wonder what I'm running from

Today I took a walk with you in the woods
it was foggy, drizzly, overcast
and the sun dully shone through the tangle of tree branches
that curled around us like a nest

we walked hand in hand
and the light rain settled into your eyelashes
melancholy dewdrops dripping from the clouds
I've seen you cry. They looked nothing like tears

I'm done trying to make myself beautiful
I'm bored with mascara, weighing down my eyelashes
gunking up my sight like a city sewer

I'm finished with lip gloss
a pop of shiny color on my wet mouth
pulling you in for a sticky kiss

I want to be ugly
to let my pores gape wide and let in the air
my skin breathing for the first time in years

I want to claw off my clothing
my fabric fittings sewn to slim me down
to tailor me into something worth loving

I want to be repulsively human
maybe all of this is because you said
how you always love the most disgusting things

You planted kisses
on me like flowers, and from them
a garden grew

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
not a crown or a clip, but cherry blossoms
they bloomed from her ears and her scalp and the hollow of her neck
she was a garden of eden

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
and roots that ran all the way down through her feet
they never held her in place
instead, they made the earth upon which she stood her home

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
who let summer sunbeams catch her eyes
as they glistened among ferny tendrils
until the autumn came

You see
A person only truly falls in love
Once in their life time
And once that time is used up
There is no more.
You can lie to yourself
And to others
But if you were truly in love with them
That love cannot be undone.
I am in love.
A love that won't go away
With my best friend.
I fell off
The bridge of love
And into the waters
Where he followed
But his love came with strings attached
A bungee
And he jumped back up
And left me sitting there in the waters
While he's up on the bridge
Calling me up there
While I'm wishing him down here
And I have no bungee.