december 31st 2023

after break she left her jewelry and you set her shirt on fire, or cut her sweater with scissors, i don’t remember. netflix original competition reality show on your macbook on her old desk, your first set of bedsheets: we arranged ourselves on the empty mattress, the one that once was mine before you threw me out, but was mine again. and they were all gone, because it was just me, and it was just you, kings of that room, stepping out of our own carcasses like a modern prometheus, all because you called my number on the street—just after i caught you bumming a cigarette in the park so i sent you an email through the school system because i thought it had been a mistake. i sat across from you and told you who i was, and you returned the gesture. you may have loved me but i told you not to ask again, and i don’t remember the first time i did, just that it kept, that you wrote it into your skin. i promised i forgave you, but love was so far, always so far from me.

we moved you out and i laughed at the paint missing from the wall above my mattress from two and a half months ago, from when i’d moved out without a word, scraping tape and photographs with my bare fingernails, begging that the hours would keep you in class away from the room. but you found me there, and you said, got everything you need? and i said, yeah, i think so, and you looked away, or maybe you hadn’t been looking at all, and you said, have a good one. we took your stuff to the sixth floor to the room in the corner of the hall and we threw a party with the soccer girl who lived there, where we sat on your mattress and called tim but he wouldn’t come, while half amara’s team vaped in a too-wide circle on the floor beneath our hanging feet. you played along for some time but you hate people, so you were satisfied when they never stopped in again, and more when amara left to live with her boyfriend for the rest of the year.

now that you loved me every night as tradition i would leave class and find your room, the door taped unlocked for me, and i’d wake you up from your depressive nap, and we’d go to the grill for dinner and order the same thing, and when we’d come back to a late winter sunset out of your street-facing window we’d parse out the last pieces of mika’s chocolate bar, and i’d take more than you because it made you sick and anxious, but you pretended to be high for me, and you’d play for a while but when your fingers got tired and you were frustrated following the tabs you’d lay your head next to mine, and we’d face apart with your eyes maybe closed or maybe aimed at the ceiling and i’d touch your hair. i’d never touched someone’s body. not even family—not friends, certainly, and not lovers—because i had always been alone, since the moment my mother shit-kicked me into this world. i said, you should grow it out and keep it blonde. you said, i hate the blonde, it’s terrible. you dyed it black that summer, maybe three months later, only took you so long because you wouldn’t get around to it. when i met you it was red. i don’t quite remember all of you from then, just the mane with an undercut—how you’d tie it in a topnot, your old pronouns—the second of three, and your wifebeater wardrobe. god, i remember it was pink once too, fuck, when you dated hailey. i liked the red the best, but i would have settled for blonde. it has faded back to brown.

intimacy is a criminal act. you kept me crawling with that alone. i watched your hands while we fought, thought about holding you while you sat silent or screamed. i think i would give anything to witness your body, clothed, to know for certain that it was once there. the shape of your shoulders and your neck, what i saw when you took me in. i don’t care about sex, i never cared for it. my comfort comes in bones and skin. you loved me for a few minutes in october so you bent your body around mine, grumbling when the episode changed and you had to get up to press play on your laptop. it was one of my favorite shows. i think i might never watch it again. when i left you tackled me in the doorway in front of petra. you asked me not to leave. apparently you did not love me.

i consider the proximity of a roof in every building i enter. i consider going where it preys on me, death of the mind, little bottles by my bed. i consider death because i am not alive. i am a person-thing. i am hardly solid matter. i am the push-and-pull, i am the violence and the check-keeping, balanced order. i can’t live without fear to call me back to the blood in my veins. humans were evolutionarily bred for danger. i was built and taught, too, to be alert. i will not let you get me first. i will not let you take the weapon off the wall. i will watch you stepping closer. don’t finger the hilt because i have never been good at fighting, don’t let me fight, without practiced words i’m cowering like a dog and i’m biting your swordhand. you were smart not to stay until i cried. you were lucky i didn’t chase you into the hallway. i did not think you would go. 

there is no answer. there is no other. my brain is broken. you answered too many prayers, unwilling angel, left too many feathers on my floor. i am your dog—i do not know if you broke me, i do not know when it happened, or if it happened, or if i was born not only a mistake but also a deformity. i hate you. i hate that i am your greatest work. you will never make another like me. i hate that she knows you better or, worse, that she doesn’t. i hate that you stole my organs out of their cage and you let them rot in the sun. take me in your dreamscape, i know that i’m there. i love you. i’ll never not love you. i heard your promise and made it mine. do whatever you want with me. i am your dog. i can’t bring myself to die. i’ve said i would’ve gone to the very end with you—the oblivion nothing. i would have talked to you until time slept before we did. i’m sorry that i am so heavy. i hope when you break her like bread it is easy. i hope you do not forget what i look like. i have trouble summoning your likeness. i’m a hypocrite. i wanted you to love me, and then i would’ve eaten you alive, fuck you for winning. i’d still spend a night with you. i’d pay two hundred for tickets to your city and stay in your parent’s house. i’d kiss you first—i will never kiss anyone first but you—but then i’d make you say it, with more than your eyes: we are cursed. you are my antidote and i am your cancer. you will twist and you will catch yourself on fire but i will be here, waiting passively for god to save me, or for you, or for anyone who could make me immortal. i am nothing but cliche melancholia, what a pain. teenager soup. i’m twenty-one in a matter of days. i wish there’d be a good one.