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.

They tell me I'm smart.
They say I shouldn't worry; of course I'll get good grades and get into a good college and get a good job and have a good life.
So I sit in chemistry and I pay attention. I write down the reactions, the calculations. I try, I really do.
Semester grade: C.
"Study more!" "Get off your laptop!" "If you went to bed earlier, you'd pay better attention in class." "It can't be that hard; you just need to put forth more effort."

Sometimes I find it hard to breathe.
My throat shrinks to an impossible size and every mention of a chemical equation is automatically magnetized to the ball of worry in my stomach.

When I get anxious, I pinch my lips.
I haven't had a need for lipstick in a long time.

Sometimes I find it hard to care.
Sometimes I dance to Beyonce and move my hips like I will never have another day to be alive.
I pretend that I am important and the ground moves beneath me while I give life to the stars and bring the moon to earth.
Maybe I can.
During musical theater class, I perform the solo and I act silly and I look stupid and I am okay.

They tell me I'm smart.
Sometimes I can't breathe, and sometimes I do not care.

I was not born afraid of strange men.
I was not born to panic when the only empty seat on the bus is next to a man.
I was not meant to cross the street when a boy walks towards me.
I was not supposed to check the underpass for rapists when I walk home at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
Were you born to make me itch and crawl in my own skin?
Were you born to sprawl your legs out on the bus and occupy much more space than is necessary while I perch on the edge of a seat and pray that the driver takes the corners slowly?
Were you born to give me sweaty palms and panic attacks and an uncertainty of whether or not I should wear that V-neck shirt to school?

I am going to tell you something that you will not want to hear, but you are going to listen. You are going to listen because I have been glaring and sighing and crying and screaming at you ever since the first time I wore a bra. Since my first period. Since the first time I wore makeup. Since a boy catcalled me before I knew that it was wrong.

You need to stop.

You cannot do this anymore because I will not let you. You are not allowed to follow me home because my hair glimmers in the sunlight- you are an obnoxious boy and I am thirteen. You are not allowed to ask me my name while we’re on the bus- you are a middle aged man and I am sixteen. You are not allowed to stare at my ******* while I debate whether or not to sign up for AP Biology- you are a hair-raising teenage boy and my body is not yours to stare at.

I am not a quiet, soft thing for you to ogle and speak to whenever you please. I am a person, and my favorite pair of socks are green. I am a girl, and the next time you open your legs and overflow into my space, I will sling my foot on top of your lap and ask your age until you understand. I am a human being, and I do not care if you think my hair is pretty. You need to leave me alone.

I am a person. I am strong and sarcastic and lazy and funny and weak and smart and riddled with anxiety, and I will not let you stare at me.

i am a graveyard.
headstones grace my fingertips and rest upon my tongue like they never left.
there is a lump in my throat the size of George Washington's skull.
his bones are propelling themselves towards the insides of my throat and down into my stomach,
where they will churn and grind against my nerves until the
steel bravery in my soul is nothing more than
melted wax.
there is a lump in my throat.
old friends and abandoned dreams earn their satisfaction by shearing away the
pointe shoes and piano keys that used to live there.
the metal jazz shoes and steel guitar that dance on my fingertips fight them off like trained assassins,
but even metal can be melted at 2190.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

i am from a pile of gluten-free pancake mix in the pantry
from a bowl of bananas that are always rotten and a drawer of pens that is never opened.
i am from the patchwork house in the middle of the street that never feels empty of anything.
i am from the rosebushes
the tree at the end of the street whose long gone limbs i remember as if they were my own.

i’m from blonde hair and adopted siblings.
i’m from introverts and lovers of books
and from driving around the country every summer because plane tickets are too expensive.

i’m from the Easter bunny and Santa Claus
and “say sorry to your brother.”
i’m from stir fry on Sundays.
i’m from Omaha and all over Europe
and potato soup and homemade bread.
from the time my brother fell down the stairs and hit his head on the wall.
from the quilt my grandmother began that now lies incomplete in a trunk in the back of the attic.

if god walked towards me
with open arms, saying
"let me save you"
i would turn away
and take my sister's hand
because
when you're home
you are saved

eyelids closed
brain running running running
white noise going going going
static brainwaves condemning exhaustion to another twenty minutes of
failed surrender
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three

turn the heater off
on
another blanket
different shirt
no blankets
favorite hoodie

you brush your teeth for the third time
sit in the kitchen and eat an apple
leave the core on the counter like a
statement of your sanity.