i think about all the lessons i have been taught. i take them to heart.

i think about how even when you want to urge "drop dead", the moment they tell you they would cut their throat if you didn't love them, the words burn up in your mouth. i love you will not roll off the tongue as easily. when i find myself throwing away everyone who excels in ways you never could.

when someone invites me to walk besides them without words, when a stranger is just inches in front of my footsteps. crossing the street, passing them, being anywhere other than behind. how i can never walk besides someone in case they pretend like you did.

when friendship was about grabbing a fist to pull your muddied self off the ground, when the hand that feeds you is the same to slap you. how you say you're sorry and when i say it doesn't matter, it means more than one thing.

what happens to me when i don't speak my mind. what happens to me when i do.

putting a name to the workings of my heart
a funnily familiar word. it comes to me, where i've heard it before, that time i heard you spit it out when i was walking home.
somehow it still doesn't come as easily as it did for you

looking at the mirror
wondering who in their right mind would, if your sick self hadn't wanted to.
and what a pity for you that you coaxed me out of my shell but not quite these intimates.
i wonder how i was too young to know better, and too old not to by anyone else's standards

i don't patch myself up as much as i do try and build over, hibernate for winter in a coffin i picked out myself.

do you think that if i had my hands in your chest like yours had mine, i'd finally be enough to make your stomach turn?