Word gets around about
a girl who never speaks.
She sits in the diner for lunch
every tuesday, and just stares.
Kids make it into a novelty.
Trying to taunt her into speaking.
Into telling everyone why she lives
in that broken down store up the
dirt road, but she never tries to
explain.  Instead she looks in your
eyes like she can see every bad
thing you've ever done, then takes
her coffee, and leaves. It's no wonder
that she isn't the most popular
in town. Eventually she'd stop coming to
the diner, and if anyone ever cared to
check on her, they'd climb through
the broken panes of a door that no
longer opened, and it wouldn't take long
to notice the ratty couch, the leaky sink,
or the empty and hanging open cupboards.
It would be easy to spot the holes in the
floor and ceiling, and the table filled
with ***** plates. These are all things that should
should jump out at them right away,
but instead they'd see the floor covered
with envelopes and paper.
And before they discovered her broken body
in the back room, they'd realize that every
piece of paper was a written letter, and every
envelope was over stuffed with them as well.
Letters filled with all the words she never
bothered to say, answering all the questions
that she'd ever been asked, and some, just
a select few, crying out for help.
In the back room her body rested, broken
at the neck and cold to the touch. Next to her
a final letter, about how she felt jealous of
those who never lived at all.

When the girl with sunken eyes
and white lips mutters to herself on
the subway, remind her that there are
plenty of things to worry about, but for her,
losing weight isn't one of them.

When she gets off at your stop,
invite her for coffee. Even if her
eyes are throwing daggers at you,
and even if every instinct in a normal person
would be yelling that her track marks are just that,
track marks, and for all you know
she might just shove a letter opener into
your stomach for the contents of your pockets.
A few bucks for another spoonful of hell.

Lace your fingers in hers after she reluctantly
agrees, and without missing a beat,
talk about how no girl should pass up free coffee
or free alcohol. After all, there is the
economy to think about.

Gossip to her about people you
pass on the street, and when she settles
into her signature silence, tell her about
how you love to make up life stories
for the people you see outside your
apartment window, and how you've never
admitted that to anyone else.

When she leaves, after a warm vanilla latte
and two cinnamon bagels, tell her that
you should do this again sometime,
and make plans to meet her again next week.

When next week rolls around, don't be
surprised to see your alley rat friend
missing.  Instead, smile and think about
all the important reasons she couldn't make it.
Like staying in to finish a term paper for law school,
or picking up an extra shift at the local volunteer hospital.

Then turn to the little boy next to you,
scared, *****, and without parents,
and offer to walk him to the local church center.
Because these days, no one should have to feel alone.

You act as if everything is okay.  You let him stroke your hair and hold you in his arms because you're lonely, and he loves you. He never stopped loving you. You think that you have it all under control because when he leans in to kiss you, something makes you stop him, and at that moment you have given yourself the chance to do the right thing. To tell him to leave, and never ask him to come back. But as soon as he's gone you're empty again. Empty like the day your first boyfriend went to see his ex-girlfriend for a talk, even though he told you he hated her guts. Empty like the first time he called you a ***** and made you cry.  Empty like the day you had to call him and tell him that your baby is gone, the baby he didn't know about. Empty like the night you took one or three or five too many Ambien after he hung up on you when you needed him the most. You hate this emptiness. It stands for everything that's every gone wrong in your life, and so the next time you see him, you kiss him like he doesn't remind you of your first boyfriend, even though he does.  You watch him smile, you see the hope in his eyes, and feel part of yourself dying on the inside, because you know that it won't end well. That this time, you'll be the heart breaker, not the heart broken.

Months later you remind yourself that he was there when you thought you were pregnant, again.  With your ex-boyfriend who you still loved's baby no less. You remind yourself how he was ready to step up, and how you never could feel the same way about him. So you try to make yourself believe that you deserve what he's doing.  You let him tell you that you broke his heart, let him spread vicious lies about you, and then tell him not to apologize on the rare occasions that he tries too.  You tell him that he's right, that it is your fault. That you just want him to be happy.  When you find someone new you fall in love, and think everything is going to be okay. Think that you've finally stopped chasing after lost puppy dogs and found a boy who doesn't need fixing. Yet for some reason you still cry at night. You still want to hold on to the people you've lost and the people who hurt you.  You still feel the sting of pain when July passes and you should be in the hospital with your newborn, but you're not.  So you write poems and try to use words to make sense out of life, but nothing ever seems to be enough, and when you hold your youth minister's four month old, so tiny and helpless, you can't help but burst into tears. All you can hear is the baby's mother saying over and over again how big the baby looks in your arms. All you can feel is the maternal instinct to clutch the child closer to you and feel it's heart beat. You try to tread water, but it feels like your drowning, and the emptiness you've been running from comes flying back. Whispering in your ear that it never left in the first place.

Hurt.
It hurts that you could leave me.
Over and over, again and again.
The same old scratched record,
being wound to play in a
room long forgotten

Pain.
I imagine that when my
heart broke for the first time,
fragile and innocent and young,
it dropped pieces into my hollow body.
So that every time it skipped a beat,
every time it ached in pain,
every time it swelled to burst,
I would feel it in between my toes,
wedged behind my knee caps,
stuck against my groin,
and resting in my fingertips.

Love.
It's supposed to be the glue.
Meant to stitch us together,
different patches of the same quilt.
But when left for us to define,
love has become acid.
Burning holes through our skin,
leaving us marked, marred, and scared to trust.
It is the venom coursing through the veins
of those bitter and dead to the world.
The air that fills the lungs of people
too afflicted by life's tragedies to carry on.

Thought.
You tried to hide behind it. You tried
to build walls out of your impressive vocabulary.
You fed yourself textbooks
and decided to learn the meaning of life.
Inside you pushed away your pain
and you replaced it with logic, but instead of feeling full,
you simply found yourself a new kind of emptiness.

Alone.
So tonight we lay in separate beds,
staring up at the stars and wondering
how they could possibly stay the same,
when everything else in our worlds
has become so very different.

When it comes to food
I don't have to say no.
Ana says that for me.
Through her eyes I read
calorie labels like death threats.
Together we write love songs
to my collar bones.
We beg my thighs never to meet.
Her touch soothes my hunger.
Ana tells me that pain
is just my stomach applauding.

Others come and go,
but Ana never leaves me.
Her name is stitched into my skin.
Tattooed on  my body
Till death do us part.