Boy left me feeling raw and pink, like the baby born a comma in the taxi
17 years ago. Boy left me feeling like Aunt, who didn’t know any better,
but still knew it all, and now she looks like a graveyard. When I was 14, I went
to her funeral, sat Shiva with her (my?) family, didn’t allow myself to cry, but I did.
Opened Photo Booth app. on my MacBook when I got home, because I didn’t know
what my tears looked like – I just wanted to see myself cry. I love crying,
and I love when other people cry. I think that I don’t like crying alone, but I do;
I keep people on speed dial, so that they can hear me cry. Boy used

to be on my speed dial. He and Aunt were the only ones who could
unravel my guts, but then Boy raveled them back up again. He gave me up
for the Girl with Brown Hair living in the next town over. She lives in a house
that quakes, and tilts. They say houses are like dogs. That people buy houses
that look like themselves. My house has a rich, bleeding door, and shingles
that try to bring me back to nature. I am the exception, although I do try
to bring myself back to nature. There is a forest in the back of my house –

it is brown, and deep, and swallows the monsters stuck in the squiggles
of my eyes. Last year, I went to the forest at night, and slept there. My mother
didn’t know. My father didn’t know. They’ll never know. My father
would have been okay with it, if I had asked. My father called himself
a pushover when writing his brain’s biography, and I murmured in agreement
when I read it. Or thought I read it, but I don’t know how to read properly yet.
I can’t keep characters in my head. I eat characters

for breakfast, along with Nutella. I’m 5’5”, and weigh 130 lbs., and buckle over
when I walk, because my crying weighs 50 lbs., so I push the Nutella
out of my stomach. The Nutella is in Boy’s stomach. Probably in
Girl with Brown Hair’s stomach now, too. I miss Aunt. I wish
she could eat Nutella with me. Next week, I’ll bring a jar of it to her grave,
and a camera. Cry and have a photo shoot, maybe, because I don’t know any better.