our souls we're much too big for our bodies,
it was bursting out the seams of our small limbs.

maybe everything started that one day
in seventh grade when we lied about what movie we were
going to see,
and we put up our hair in brown piles on top of our heads
and squeezed into pants so small we could feel our bones pressing against
the fabric.

when we walked into town,
miles from your house in the dusty summer,
with me dragging my skateboard along,
with the skull on the bottom
and you walking with you long legs slightly in front of me;
drunkards with
swiveling eyes whistled at us from
a green jeep and tried to cajole us into the car,
my small ******* was ****** high into
the sweltering air
"******* YOU MISOGYNISTIC *******,"

we couldn't get into the movie we wanted to,
so we snuck into a different one
filled with snow and dark
and twirling tendrils that reached toward us and
made our stomach crawl.

sometimes i miss the times desperately
when we would pack things into a small cloth
sack
food, knives
we'd trek in the forest for hours and
this one time we broke into somebodies pool, dipped our feet in
then got chased away by their livid dog.

we had left the gun we brought there,
you had two and we liked feeling it cold against our
empty fingers,
so i had to run back and get it.

sometimes i think about how if i had never met you,
my life would be so different.
i would have never smoked my first joint
with you on your trampoline
encased in large, fluffy blankets
under millions of stars that couldn't quite fit in our
eyes all at the same time.

we would have never pranced in
yellow drying grass,
and almost fell into your creek, with
your brother laughing behind.

i'm glad we wrote songs
together even if they were about
blood dripping slowly from our open carcasses;
we weren't the most optimistic kinds of
girls.

we had wills as hard as
hitting iron,
metallic in spurting bloodshed.

we were rebellious,
like other girls we're pretty,

and we fought like warriors should
in small, bland classrooms
with teachers who knew nothing of being hurt.

our voices were strong,
unwavering like something found in the depths of a morning sky.

we raised ourselves well, darling.