In my veins,
there is a little girl
shut away in a bathroom.

Because
there is more sense
in porcelain bowls
than any which exists
in other people's
mouths.

In my cup,
there is a broken soul
who stutters her hands
and slits her wrists.

She smells like butterscotch
and a regret that
seeps from every inch
of her blistered body
because of the inch long
squirrel thing
buried in her center.

In my bed,
there is a boy
with nothing to lose.

He smiles too wide
and loves too hard and fast
for anyone else to handle and
for that,
he is sorry.

In my head,
they sing a chorus
of hope and
redemption,

Love us, they said.

Together, we could be a family.

Do you remember,
two years ago

I wrote you a story,
bound with the string I could find
beneath the burned acre carpet
of my first apartment.

I gave it to you
two weeks late, on
printed cheap paper.
Chemically melted with the telling
of what I saw,
two hundred miles away
on January fifth.

I wrote about the cargo train
that passes across the street
of my university every day
at nine pm.

I told you that it drove at least two times faster
than the Amtrak, because people are more precious than cargo.

I told you about how when I was stuck
at the street crossing,
from nine to nine fifteen.
How I saw salvation
in the screaming, shaking tracks.

Tonight I heard the same train,
from outside my third apartment,
set on the opposite side of the train tracks,
a couple meters across
from where I stood two years ago,
when the smell of acid pavement
inked my memories of you,
and your eighteenth birthday.

I think you want me to fall in love with you.

I think you want me to breathe you in,
suffocating to keep any of you from getting
out.

I think you want me to caress your name on my tongue
like a thick smoke that I take back in
through my nose,
the whitest parts going nowhere
else,

I think you want me to revel you,
pedestal you,
please never leave me, you.

I do not love like the morning.

I do not happen every day like clockwork,
and I do not love, as if
it was meant to be.

I love as an infection,
spreading over every single fiber and vein;

If I take you in completely.
Bubbling over in crystal froth,
spiking a fever of one hundred and two
you will either die by my hand, or
be left with some aching disease.

My only fear of
wanting to fall in love with you
is that you will forget that I was once a vaccine
and that you will
chicken soup Robitussin cold compress me
away.

When we were young
we used to burn ants alive.

We would go to the detective store,
back when it existed
to buy listening devices
and itching powder.

Our summers were filled with
agent number sevens
and femme fatales.

We'd hide under the stairs
spy on our aunts and grandmothers
hoping to hear some of the
spelled out words
family secrets
hushed looks, that so frequented our presence.

I wonder if you would still snicker
hold your hand over your mouth,
face blooming red,
if you knew that the
spelled out words
and family secrets
are now about you.

You said that you could only understand things
in terms of logic.

So when you ask me why I am sad
or lonely
or anxious,
pestering me with the daunting whys and how comes
of a six year old; I can't help but feel trapped.

There is no logical way to explain
what keeps me up at night
the sharpness of my inhales as rooms grow small
why I don't want you to hold me
or touch me
or breathe my air.

There is no way to explain

the constant panic in my bones

to someone who can only see the lack of
threat,
logic.

She had told me, with water in her right and
obligatory waves in her left
that they all wanted to feel special.

They didn’t want to do special things,
or think special thoughts,
but they all wanted to be seen as something

Unique, or breathtaking, and
so so so necessary
that they could drive us mad.

The sooner I could realize this,
she said,
the better off I would be.

And now, with nothing in my left  and
obligatory waves to my right

I wonder if this means that everyone
who has ever said that I am anyone

just wanted me to feel special.

Sometimes I look at you and wonder when
exactly, when
the beginning of your voice
started sounding like a scratched record

and at what point, exactly,
did your eyes change to being so dark
all of the time

I want to know at what point, then
had you learned to smile so factitiously
and **** in your gut
and pose at the right angle

I want to know, more than anything
when you started being so
miserable
all the time.

And the more I think about it,
about you,
existing,
the more terrified I feel.