I can tell you about the girl.
Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.
She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.
Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.
One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.
I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.
She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.
After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.
Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.
Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."
I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."
She asked, "We will be okay, right?"
I hope.