sweet bones

Ask me about the summer I fell in love with someone more blackberry bramble than girl. Aching to be touched but never talking about the thorns. And me, all heavy handed and too proud to acknowledge the things I’d cut myself on. I dreamt about juice running down my chin for months.

The boy in the back room holds the mirror to his neck. You aren’t in love with him. At least, not yet. For now, he doesn’t know how to touch you with anything but his hands. And so it’s almost enough, and it’s more than you can stand. He is a Red Light District in and of himself. When he offers Indulgence like ambrosia, you lick it from his fingers and he thinks this is all he knows how to give. Teeth on his neck, hand between his thighs, you say you want his heart, but he doesn’t understand. He gives his mouth, instead. After that, the days ferment like apricot wine. You bite his lips the right kind of russet, make music of his spine. And then at night, you dream of plunging your fist through his ribs to tear out the songbird inside. But in the mornings, you do him violence with the softest parts of your hands. You find his sweetness. You make it yours, instead. We call this, surviving. We call this, sin. You’ll regret it, someday. But, right now, you aren’t in love with him. You aren’t in love with him. At least, not yet.

Whatever I was expecting, it isn’t this: all that shy and quiet tucked into hunched shoulders and bashful non-eye contact, swapping secrets over hot tea with milk and lots of honey.   You know, If you’d have asked me a year ago, two years ago, two weeks ago, I’d have said love was all teeth.   Except—here he is, sitting across the table tapping his foot against my knee, talking about stars or storms or waking up in the middle of a good dream. All soft hands. All quiet, heated wanting. All coffee cups and candlelight and none of the ugly.   Turns out, love can’t hold his liquor, can’t hold himself together, pours over the table after two beers and weeps. Just a sad, sweet little thing, looking for the lessons in the heartbreaks.   Nothing like me—trying to hammer trauma into something sharper, locking doors instead of opening them. Me, with his number tucked into my pocket, knowing full well I’ll never call him.

A CYNIC’S LETTER TO HER FUTURE SELF:   Dear person I will be when I’m not lonely, please remember what it felt like before you fell in love–not so that lonely can keep haunting your house even when there is no room for him, but so that when he does move back in you aren’t so startled by the aching. He is such a quiet house guest, but he needs so many pieces you are not willing to give. I’m asking you to be ready to give them. I’m asking you to pack light. It’s a long walk back alone. Each taste of love makes the empty harder to swallow. I know. Dear person I will be when I am happy: please don’t forget the person that I am right now. Please don’t treat me like an exit wound, or a broken fever, please remember all the things I carried for you. Please remember all the days I cried for you, the mistakes I made so you didn’t have to. Please remember all the groundwork I laid to get us here. We both know that there are nights where the survival is ugly–where regret is the only thing still living in the rafters. The rest are all skeletons. I know how badly you will want to bury all that I am and all that I used to be. But don’t you dare forget that you couldn’t have gotten better without me.

                                       my mania becomes a metaphor/the word kindling   the way a small burning thing becomes a fire the way that this makes the fire     once again      a small burning thing            after all what is a sun     but every possible thing                                                   burning?

Scene, enter major disappointment, enter the name my mother wanted to give me but my father had his mother, had his love picked. This is only important because a house is not a home just because the glass case stays on. So, there is nothing sentimental about the doll house except that it was beautiful, except that I imagined myself two inches small. The worst thing a girl can be is tall, is loud, is pregnant, is happy. The worst thing a girl can be is loved. You raise a baby and you carve out a daughter in your image, your eyes, your bad habits, which means this story has happened before. A house is not a home just because you store your boxes there. So, there is no undoing ancestry in pop-tarts, or coffee, or an ivy league education, except that these were the puzzle pieces I had to shave myself, except that I imagined myself Wonder Woman, saving the day. The worst thing a girl can be is her mother’s nightmare. I raise a baby and I give up my heroism, my closet, my name. This story has happened to me and I am not ready to see it reel back again. A legacy is not a family just because people die. Enter the wheel that keeps spinning, enter the cycle of unplanned motherhood and burdened motherhood and quiet paternity. Enter the sound of one person trying to fall asleep. Enter someone with your face with my face with her face. Enter a child. When she tells you that she wants to be just like you, you’ll call it a blessing, a gift. But the glass case doll house, the shared pop-tarts, the other side of every duality. But it’ll be years before you recognize the prophecy. The worst thing a girl can be is herself. Enter me.

Two years ago, you were all white knuckle and grit. You abandoned your softness in a cardboard box on the side of the road—decided it was someone else’s problem, now. Two years ago, your depression was an undiagnosed monster in the pit of your stomach and it swallowed everything. You felt like a cardboard cutout of a person; you felt like TV static. You wrote yourself into something ugly so that you didn’t have to be so soft– so small, so honey-heart. It didn’t work, did it? Take a good look at the person you become two years from now: look how she is frayed at the edges like hand-me-down lace. Look how her bones are too old for her, how they creak like a house full of someone else’s photo albums. Look how soft she is: like you could press your hand right through her stomach and come out the other side. She knows, that every boy you fall in love with between there and now takes you for granted. Every girl who lets you kiss her stops texting you back. That you keep filling your empty bed, because you don’t know how to fill your empty chest. Trouble is, you keep falling in love with open wounds then acting surprised when you are left with nothing but blood in a lifeboat. It’s time to stop sinking. You are important, even if no one ever likes your poetry. You are important, even if he doesn’t love you back, even if she’s only interested in sleeping with you, even if he isn’t. Your voice matters, even if no one listens to it. Your worth does not come with clauses and conditions. It does not disappear with no one to validate it– you are valid. Even if no one else thinks so. Two years from now, you will be soft. You will be all split-ends and paperbacks. It will hurt. And it’ll be okay. These are the growing pains we never grow out of. I know you never asked to be born. But that’s because people don’t ask for miracles: they are given. You exist, even though it would be much easier for you not to. Even though there are literally billions of events that had to happen before you could happen, which makes you one of the most improbable things in existence and yet, you are here. But I don’t expect you to say thank you. There is too much ache in your upbringing. There have been too many bad days. Two years ago, you declared war on your gentle everything. It will take the full two years to realize you are only hurting yourself.