Britney

I am rearranging and smoothing over all my parts like a glass shard puzzle done by bare hands. Admittedly, I am at a loss. I’ve stopped sleeping for more than two hours a day and when I do, I have the most vivid, telling dreams that evade my grasp within moments of awakening. I am used to this kind of running away from me.

It’s so strange to be rising and falling all at once.

7/14/16: I miss turning and having you kiss me and I miss interesting you and being the good brand of sick and not feeling like a marble that gets pulled by chance from the sack.

My new favorite types are Genie the feral child, June and Jennifer and their cryptophasia, all the girls I’ve known who were put to waste in their rooms because they told the truth and became Too Much. None of them are new to me—just cycling back around. There’s an extra seat for me in the back, they say. I don’t tell anyone where I am going.

7/29/16: The worst I’ve ever felt was when you merged with the heart beating behind my ears I hate that you come with my blood and that you’ve eaten all my platelets so that I drop recovery.

I listen to “Aneurysm” and try to remember the last person who made this song feel like something. I count in years. Nothing about this realization is good. In our ongoing, unspoken chess game I am constantly wondering where I stand on the board. I doubt I have ever removed myself from the pawn position. I shake the thought and pretend not to hide quaking legs beneath a semblance of order and OK-ness. I can keep going. One foot forward. I can be better. Try not to trip.

“Pick me, pick me yeah / Everyone is waiting / Pick me, pick me, yeah / You can be the baby.” —“Dive,” Nirvana

I live in the house that Jack built without a deed of my own. I write to avoid the monotony of going from corner to corner and realize how much more misery I have left to give. I nurse it. I give it a home birth. I raise it in the darkened rooms where we forget windows. I feed it three meals a day. I release it. ♦