i remember being a child
i remember the ignorance
i remember the jump rope that whispered, “how do people’s knees just /hurt/“

i remember dreaming of digging mosquito bites out of my flesh, but never daring to

i remember peering through the cream-colored tissue paper and seeing the blue and green toned ribbon rivers flowing underneath, wanting so badly, so innately, to dam them, to disrupt them, to desecrate and destroy

i remember watching television without glasses, i remember seeing the movies, seeing the bad but handsome men, i remember wanting their scars, wanting my own, wanting to save the broken glass pieces of the broken glass picture frame (more than i even wanted to save the once precious drawing inside), wanting to remember every memory, every mistake

every time i thought of pain, i thought
how, why,
when


and now, i have a warm and wretched wedding ring made of my own marred and mangled mistake

put there by a hot, hollow heat

and that hell-fire put there by either me as a careless adult


or by the wishes i had as a child

to be

mysterious
interesting
and
hurt

to have abundant axiomatic afflictions
to be scuffed-up and broken-in
to be a well-loved leather wallet
to be an other
to be seen as damaged and dangerous

to say “keep away”
to say “i have lived and you have not”

and maybe one day,
to say, “that one looks just like mine”

and eagerly pull at my clothing
and carefully cull
desperate to reveal myself
and find camaraderie in unforgettable pain