Hypocrisy tastes like a burning flag, metallic and too sweet, like prepackaged lemonade and the sweat on your upper lip. Ghost girls with skin the color of special facilities linger in map-less forests, fleeing from camps where they dip chin-dimpled children in ice bucket lies. It’s only a game, gentlemen. Don’t think too loud or they’ll paint ribbons around your neck faster than you can whisper “this is wrong,” faster than “this is inhumane,” and even faster than “where is God?” Faster than the pale, fleshy worms that creep into the orbs of innocence embedded in girls’ abdomens and turns them crimson, and what escapes is only soggy snow and whimpers of protest. But no, you can’t blame those vermes. It’s human nature. This is all human nature, and we still find ourselves better than the trees, faster than sound, higher than the clouds.

I will bury your memory in the hill just past the chain-link fence, the one where we’d spend hours discussing “R-rated things” and skipping steadfast from our childish remains. It’s okay that you’d rather cut the throat of what used to be my favorite thought to mull over than letting it breathe in the pool of your cerebrum.
Or, now, it is a puddle.
You’ve beaten yourself into the way society wants you to be: humming the tune of burning books and inhaling the charred whimpers. I’ll heed the blame, too, for I was spendthrifty with time and energy trying to hate you (when really, I needed you all along). I’ll just send you a postcard when we’re both caffeine-hunched adults, the complete opposite of how we thought we would turn out to be. Maybe it will release something, anything, to trickle back into the droplet of honesty you have and perhaps your crow’s feet will crinkle.