two summers ago we sat in dark hallways and you shined a flashlight through my palm and traced the veins that threaded my fingers. we kissed like children, with closed mouths and open eyes and searched for answers in the bottom of an orange bottle of pills. you wept the first time you tried to touch me and i flinched away because in the world i grew up, a hand laid on my skin became punishment. you faded away at the end of a rope after too many years of a heart that bled with the pain of someone much older, a sacrifice for the uncreated child you longed for and i was alone in the same hallways in which we used to brush hands