Bo, I’ve just been Playing Pretend.
Putting on make-up and brushing my hair. Putting on dresses and smiling. Faking.

Dear, I wish I could say you’ve replaced the past, but all I can say is I hate me.

I’m dragging you about. Breaking your heart one atrium at a time. I’m putting you in his place, taking you to our old haunts.
Truthfully, I hate the product in your hair. I despise the nick-name “boo.” I could care less about champagne and “fine dining.” I wish you read more than non-fiction. I want you to laugh at my cheesy jokes. I wish you’d gotten upset when I told you about the boy. You claim to be free, but you’re more caged than me. Worry worry worry. About one word answers,  about slow responses, about me, about the non-existent us.

I’m offering apologies, because I never told you. I’m sorry, dear, but the way you offer me your cheek offends me. The way you put my hand on your leg repulses me. Your damp fist in mine, makes me reach for hand sanitizer. Your love for eighties fashion causes me to worry for your sanity. Your style drives me crazy. I want band shirts, and thrift stores, but you want quality over quantity. I want fifty-seven fifty cent skirts that I’ll wear once.

I’m tired of playing happy for you. I’m sick of being sweet.

I was in it because you were interesting, now I’m in it for the drugs.

I’m avoiding your gaze more. Hoping you don’t see the things I do, because dear, I’m afraid to be alone.

Honestly, sweetheart, your hands get me nowhere. Every touch is just that. I’m sorry dear, but your kiss stops at my lips. I apologize love, but you’re not in my head. Or my heart. You’re just a placeholder.

You’re me trying to find solution.

Try, try, trying to find the answers. Trying to find the cure.

And failing.

Miserably.

All I’ve figured out, is I can’t stop looking left, when you’re sitting to my right. All I know is kissing you feels like cheating. All I know is I can’t get him out of my brain. All I wish is that I would have fought harder. All I see is how us ending has pulled him further from the surface. All I can worry about is his masochism.

Darling, I’m sorry, but I’m dead weight. I have nothing left to give you.

In third grade, I lived in a white rent house; forever known as the “white house.” It was in the backyard of this house that I played Pocahontas, and Little House on the Prarie, it is also where I met him. I don’t remember his face, or his name, only his age: sixteen, his buzz cut and the fact that he live with his grandma.
I was a quiet girl, with long brown, curly hair falling past my shoulders. I was nine. The boy and I became friends of sorts talking through the chain link; the criss-cross of the metal keeping me from his full face. Eventually our friendship moved from the backyard to the Front yard, where there was no chain link and things blurred together. The two yards meeting in the middle, mirroring the friendship of the boy and I.
Soon a game developed, a new version of hide and seek perfect for two. I would hide a piece of paper, and he’d try to find it. I hid it in the same spot every time, the huge terracotta *** on my front porch: the one with no plant life, only black potting soil with the white fertilizer specks.
I remember staring down at the small white paper as he quickly scanned the porch, not really looking. Then his eyes would latch onto me. He’d kneel before me, and ask the question I would always dread, “Where did you hide it?”
I didn’t dread the question itself, just the after. He would take my hand and lead me over the boundary between our yards. The one that was invisible and mirrored our friendship.
I remember looking down at the green outside carpeting as I climbed the steps to his grandmother’s house, hand in hand with the boy. He took me inside, down a long hallway to his room. His grandmother wasn’t home. I stepped into the room, my tennis-shoed feet sinking into the thick carpeting, which was so very much like my grandmother’s.
He closed the door; I remember exactly how the lock clicked into place before he turned to me, smiling.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he said “you hid the paper in a place I couldn’t look at outside.”
I told him it was in the big *** outside my ouse then, afraid, but not really sure of what.
“No,” he said, “I check there. Why would you lie to me?”
And that was when he lifted my shirt, exposing the chest of a child, with my baby fat belly, and not a hint of puberty. The pants were next. I remember watching them, red with white hearts, the shorts my mother had made me falling to the ground, pooling softly around my ankles. I never said no, I was only silent, my brother was four at the time, he was the cute one then, so I desperately wanted the boys attention.
I was standing there in my underwear, too tall socks, and tennis shoes. Glancing towards the door that seemed to have grown in size, like the Christmas tree in the Nutcracker.
His hands went to my *******, sliding them down to my ankles, making the familiar swishing against the dry skin of my legs as they went down. He just sat there for a moment, staring. Finally he said “Well, I guess the paper must be out there after all.”
He pulled up my ******* and helped me into my pants. He opened the door, which had returned to normal size, and lead me out into the sunlight, crossing the invisible boundary of our yards. He plucked the paper from the planter and smiled.
“You know if you want to be on the internet all you have to do is show your underwear.”
He turned and walked away then, dropping the precious paper on the boundary of our friendship as he went.

A girl and a boy pick their way across the snow-wrecked parking lot, holding hands even if they have to stretch to reach. She’s laughing, an arm out slightly for balance, like a gymnast. They come closer together as they reach a spot that is snow free, brushing arms, then the inevitable happens. The boy steps in the cold snow slush; trying to pretend his canvas shoes aren’t soaked through. The girl laughs, covering her mouth; hiding her amusement at his misfortune. Their mouths move through quick conversation, the words inaudible. They don’t really matter though, He’ll get home and peel off his damp socks and remember her yet again. The laugh that escaped her lips before she could control it, the cold hearted canvas that failed to provide adequate protection, and the way he smiled and continued walking, just to hold her hand.

One misstep,
an ill placed footfall,
the single clumsy blunder,
can ruin even the most graceful
trips.

The mortal enemy of canvas
is the day the sun doesn’t shine.
The day the sky sheds its grey onto earth.
Whether rain or snow,
it doesn’t matter much.

One misstep,
and cold hearted canvas
absorbs the error you’d like to erase.
Mistakes fade,
but will always be remembered
by your cold, wet socks,
and the cold-hearted canvas.

There is comfort with you, the softness of you, hair, eyes, smile, hands, counteract my hard edges. Neutralizing. My acidity becomes neutral as you trace the angels of the spine and hip bones. Our chemistry creating the ultimate balance. Locking eyes ignites chemicals below the stomach bubbling in my throat and chest. Soft lines of fingers, juxtaposed against my fumbling appendages. The quiet of your voice colliding with the raucousness of my own. The basic collision of differences creating the uncontrollable, but inevitable reaction. But within the difference lies the similarity, the melody of voices vocalizing literature. The magnetic pull compelling our bodies to become one. The warmth of flawed bodies tangled together in a twin bed. The resentfulness towards hatred and hypocrisy, the inclination towards love and understanding. The creation of something inexplicable, something unknown, unexpected, something that has redefined beauty.

You say those other women don’t matter, that they’re in your past. It doesn’t matter. I’m like you in that sense, I want to know, and then again, I don’t. All I can see is that you were with them first. Each of them stealing a bit of you from me, marring your surface.

They left you with scars I can’t mend. It’s too late for that. The wounds have already scabbed over, been picked at, and faded into ghostly white scars. All I could do was try and pull you from the water you were struggling to keep your head above. My grip slipped once, and I let you fall back into the blak glass of water. That makes me one of them, like them. Then I dove in after you, pulling you from the bottom and towards the surface.

I didn’t make it though, I got confused about up and down and left and right. My lungs were throbbing, throat begging me to take a breath. I opened my eyes then, and found yours. Blue meeting green in the black abyss. Then suddenly, you kicked, propelling us towards the surface. We broke together, rippling the dark water. Gasping for air. Filling our lungs with precious gas.

Then they’re there again, picking at my brain with their writing and their text messages. They smiling knowingly, whispering in my ear, “You’re just like us,” over and over. Until my throat tightens and my eyes burn, glowing green. They make me doubt you, but even more so, doubt myself. Am I enough? Pretty enough, smart enough, different enough. I hope so, because no matter how many times you say it, or how far we swim, they’re still there whispering across the abyss.

I need help.
I pull back my hair. Tame my locks.
I put on my mask for the lovers.
For the Customers
For everyone.
Anyone.
I’m struggling behind these eyes, Below these lashes.
I’m drowning in my own mouth.Sinking in my own skin.
Desperately clutching at anything that looks as if it might float:
                     Illegal substances
                     Old Lovers
                     Best Friends
                     Books
                     New Lovers
                    
And we’re all sinking.
All drowning.
All floundering about this ******* life.
Blind.
Deaf.
Bland.
Caged.

Let’s all let go. Let’s all run.

Let’s all get California eyes and sit on beaches.
Let’s all hold hands and sprint.
Let’s go to a place that doesn’t sleep.

Let’s let go. Let’s Be free.

If I take a step, you’ll take two,
Right?
And two will turn to two thousand, two million.

And we’ll run. We’ll Laugh. We’ll Live. We’ll Die. We’ll Sing. We’ll fall silent.
We’ll Relish in the contrast
We’ll find comfort in the chaos.