I should love you as an eight year old,
asking to be excused from your third grade class
to go throw up in the bathroom.
Leaning over your desk in fevered prayer,
hunched over two tender nubs of breast.
Sitting down with your counselor
and a pack of giggling girls to have “the talk”
while bleeding into a *** of toilet paper.

I should love you as a twelve year old,
blue eyes lined and lipstick smudged.
Crouched behind the bushes, expelling chunks
of non-digested pizza and coke.
Taking two bottles of tylenol and laying down
on your kitchen floor, watching the broiler burn.
Calling your boyfriend, and whispering
so your mom won’t hear
“I love you, I hate you, don’t go, leave me to die”

I should love you as a fourteen year old,
thin as a pencil, hair black and straight
Walking with a humming in your head
to your eighth grade classes, slipping away
to the library and reading books on dying
and so you steal a bottle of ativan
from your grandfather’s medicine cabinet.
You take 10.

I should love you as you are now.
Seventeen, eyes darkened to a jade,
and burnt out on suicide attempts.

But I don’t.