emotional lottery: scent notes of pretzels and lipgloss

glazed fern green tiles checkerboard to coat my brother's bathroom walls. the bathwater is steaming and unremarkable, stark from the white tub it resides in. in it, i sip thousand calorie hot chocolate from a pink rimmed mug as sweat beads at the nape of my neck—beneath my swaddled hair.

there is a skylight, it is long and thin as it strips from one corner to another, it exposes the sky that flushes violet and crimson as smooth, melancholy ballads ring out from my speaker. i submerge myself further and dream of cecilia lisbon. 

is loneliness worth the avoidance of humiliation that accompanies talking to him? the bath draws the guilt from my pores but not enough to change my feelings for you. i hang my legs, pale and speckled with sprouting follicles out of the water to drip dry—a soft-launching of bitterness in cool fog.

on weekends, in our ex-boyfriend's hoodies and stolen black thongs, we lounge on annie's couch in a tangle of limbs. the stale smell of alcohol from the night before lingers still and won't be a problem until my mother comes to drive me home. from practice kissing at sleepovers to sex with strangers from bars in alleyways, i've grown up with you and i wouldn't change what we have for the world.

aftermath of nights out drowns me in regret and if i still smoked, the cogulated sound of this cough would worry me. if i hadn't bled today i would do a test tomorrow and pray for a negative. once i told louise that eight-year-old me would pray to god that i would die, some catholic-sick brainwashing that convinced me my sins were bigger than i could manage. she looked at me weird—"what are you on about?"—apparently this feeling wasn't as universal as i had surmised.

still, as i stay haunted by my emotional lottery, i will lick the salt off of pretzels and scrape algae from my hair but it will not be enough. nothing ever will be. perhaps that in itself is substaintial, or perhaps it doesn't even matter. so as i lose my hair, and you lose your hearing, so long as we are entwined in damp sheets each night, i will be forgiven.