I carved liar into a birch tree with my house key,
the bark peeling back like it agreed with me,
and kissed the wound to make it better.
(It tasted like sap and second chances.)

Don’t worry,
I didn’t curse you.
Just mildly inconvenienced your future.
Just made sure the next time you made a wish,
it’d take the long way home.

I was going to bring your sweatshirt with the teethed-on drawstrings
until I remembered
you never apologized
for that thing in November.
(I'm still deciding which thing.)

The neighbor came out, squinting into the half-lit yard.
Asked if I was okay.
I said,
"I’m practicing stillness, Babe,"
like it was a normal thing to say,
like the word Babe didn’t snap in the cold air like an old wire.

She backed away —
probably could feel the vibration of me
almost texting you something poetic
and illegal.

My phone’s on 2%.
Which means the night has stakes.
I love when there’s stakes.
Feels romantic.
Feels cinematic.
Feels like if I walked into traffic,
even the streetlights would lean closer to watch.

It feels like
I could throw a rock at your window,
and it would break
into a heart shape,
because the universe loves a bit.
Because somewhere, some cheap god
loves a pretty mess.

I thought about leaving you a voicemail.
Just heavy breathing and maybe a line from that song
we used to swear wasn’t about us.
You know the one —
the one where nobody says sorry,
they just drown better than the last time.

Instead,
I sat down in the driveway.
Let the cold crawl up my back like a consequence.
Watched my breath weave itself into small white lies.
Practicing, I guess.
For the next time you ask if I'm fine.

If salvation ever came,
it came teeth-first.
I bit my own tongue last night,
tasted copper and salt like a curse I knew by name.
The blood pooled under my teeth,
hot and mean,
and I swallowed it like a promise I couldn’t keep.

I still dream of him standing in my doorway,
hands full of stones and silence,
eyes bright with the kind of cruelty that doesn't bother aiming,
and I wake up gnashing my teeth,
chewing through the rope of my own patience.

I’ve grown rabid in respite
all claws and bitten-down nails,
a beast pacing the borders of my own skin,
still biting down promises like bones.

Some nights I think if he came back,
I’d tear him apart
just to see if he bleeds the same color as me.
Then I'd leave him open,
let the stars learn his name,
and no one sang him back.

The morning cracked wrong again.
Light spilling like something nobody cleaned up.

It was the kind of sky
you could mistake for mercy
if you weren’t paying attention.

The sky did that thing—
couldn’t decide between rain or nothing—
so you walk around all day
half-braced for the wrong kind of touch.

You told me once
you only believed in second chances
if you didn’t have to ask for them.

I wonder if you still say **** like that—
out loud,
like it's not a kind of begging too.

The trees are pretending it’s spring already.
It’s not.
They just want it to be.

I keep forgetting what month it is
and calling it muscle memory.

I’m fine.
I’m fine.
It’s just the weather bending wrong again.
It’s just the air folding at the corners.
It’s just a version of me
still practicing hello
in case you forgot
how to say my name.

Maybe I bent wrong too.
Maybe the sky just learned it from me.

I left an earring on your nightstand
like a dare,
like a dog whistle only I could hear,
like a lie I could almost live with,
like a warning you didn’t read.

You wrote me like you were killing time.
I let you.
I was tired—
tired of being the intermission
between things you actually wanted,
tired of holding out my hands
just to catch the sound of you leaving.

It was raining the next day.
Of course it was raining.
The whole city smelled like last chances
wrung out in the gutter,
like a bouquet dropped
when someone realized it wouldn’t change anything,

You said,
"Take care of yourself."
And I did—
by breaking every mirror
that still showed me your mouth,
by smashing every reflection
that looked like hope.

There's a version of me
still waiting at that train station—
wearing the wrong jacket,
gripping the wrong book,
mistaking longing for directions,
carrying promises like ballast.
I'll know it's you
by the way my spine recognizes the disaster
before my eyes do.

I hope she never learns.
I hope she keeps looking up every time the wind shifts.
I hope she believes in arrivals.
Even when no one steps off.

There’s something about late September
that makes me want to text people
I only miss when I’m too tired to lie.

There’s a moth in my mouth again.
I try to sing and it *****.

Some nights I rehearse conversations
with people I haven’t forgiven.
Some of them are alive.
Some of them are me.

I keep a list of people
I swore I’d stop dreaming about.
I keep dreaming anyway.

I talk to no one
like they’ll answer differently this time.
I wake up with a wingbeat
pressed into the backs of my teeth.

I think I’m leaking
something no one taught me how to name.
It leaves stains on my straws
It fogs the mirror before I do.
It answers to my voice
but only when I’m not using it.

There’s something about late September
that makes everything feel returned,
but not forgiven.
I don’t text them.
I let the silence say maybe I meant to.

I told the doctor
my heart felt like a flip phone
set to vibrate
in the back pocket of my jeans—
buzzing between spine
and tenth-grade desk,
shaking my bones
like a train no one saw coming—
except me.

I could feel my pulse
gathering its coat, like it had somewhere to be.
He said I was within diagnostic range.
He said I was presenting as stable.

I said I felt like a girl
screaming
inside a library.

They said:
What a beautiful metaphor.
I said:
It’s not a metaphor.
It’s a girl.
She’s in there.
She’s still screaming.

And they nodded,
said I seemed self-aware—
like that settles that.

They wrote “no cause for concern”
in my file.
The room was quiet.
The library was loud.

My heart is still vibrating.
I feel it—
right there, between spine and desk.

No one picks up.

We said we’d never stop believing
in fairies,
in kindness,
in return phone calls.

We swore we’d never
become like them.
The adults
with milky eyes
and calendars
and knives
they only use for mail.

You said we’d grow up
but stay soft.
Like peaches.
Like lullabies.

You pulled your own tooth out
in second grade
just to see if the blood felt like something.
It didn’t.
But you didn’t say that out loud.

I held your hand
and told you it meant
you were brave.

You said the tooth fairy would bring you
everything you circled
in The American Girl Catalog.
You got two dollars
and a cavity.
Welcome to Earth.

I still have some of my baby teeth
rattling around in a film canister,
in the same box as my First Communion Dress
and my Princess Diana Beanie Baby.

I thought I was just saving pieces.
I never knew which parts of girlhood
were meant to be disposable.

As if saving them
meant I hadn’t lost
the rest.