Borrow the bones, written on the back of a receipt, nothing else to go off of. An instruction, maybe? To dig a hole in the ground of my backyard and look for what remains of my childhood pet, frail thing now turned to hard nothing. A quote, Neruda's, life is only a borrowing of bones. A metaphor about something always remaining, because even after chewing you up they'll still have to spit out your marrow, or a slight more literal way of asking myself to learn to enjoy having other people's leftovers, because once it's too late I'll be looking at licked clean plates to find the speck of sauce I'm hungry enough to swallow down, porcelain and all.

On the first notebook I ever got myself, for the purpose of gut spilling with hearts for i's dots, a teenager's private diary: How do I forgive her? Saying she’s human means little to nothing. I am too, and I've never forgiven myself. A friend, for living her life in a way I was too green and young to see as anything other than betrayal? My mom, for being. A friend's mother, for not letting her hang out at my place. The love of my life—whoever she was at that year, day, hour of the night.

A draft of a text I never sent, dramatic and with a blinking cursor coming in even more theatrical flashes: I think having you would kiII me. But I've never had anyone and I've never died.

It's a Neruda quote, it was the best friend who never hit me back, and I've never really thought to begin with. It's whatever I want it to be, or else I would have given it an end, put a heart-dotted name to it, sent it, I would have borrowed those bones, forgiven her, had her.