I always tried to explain.
"I'm sick"
"I'm sorry"
"I'm trying"

But she doesn't know. How would she? She knows boybands and finger hearts and working just hard enough.

That's not her fault (its really not) but it's easier to be angry, indignant than whatever I really am.

Her words and hate and the ever-present ether wrap around me and I can't tear them off so I go for the shirt (this is what my mother would later use as my benchmark for crazy) and the sound of tiny threads coming through tiny loops lasts a joyous second and I can breath and I am gone.

I am back and I remember that the words and hate and doom are still there and now with them is a symbol of just how wrong my self is.

I sit motionless but I'm running.

I kept the carcass for months. In a corner out of sight, to be seen but only by the trained eye.
Some days it was scolding but some days it was proof, a purple heart, a trophy of battles lost.

Some days I miss it. In my mind it's hanging from the rafters (not in the dead way).  It's the retired jersey of an athlete who in the end wasn't very good but oh she tried to be.