Pitter patter this all night thing. Stare at me a little more and then tell me not to touch you. I lost myself in your embrace, all black pea coat drowned in your chest. Your eyes hidden by those eyebrows. Stop breathing so I don't think about you anymore.
I try to tell the whole story of how it was, how it is now...and it just doesn't matter. I shake in my fierceness of who I was then compared to who I am now. My heart has been packed on ice, preserved like a cucumber in a brine that can't be recreated. It's all there, the elements of those rudimentary feelings. I liked you and you betrayed me. I reached for you and you told me not to touch you. The sheering off of this emotion, I want to like you, maybe love you but I just need you to act right. I turned around after performing a miracle and your wouldn't walk through the sea with me. So now it is. Drive away in in your truck and I'll stand here like a stupid girl and chalk it up to not being good enough for a drunk whose addicted to laughter and cocaine.
I tied a ribbon to a tree and pretended like it meant something. Call me on one of those giant plastic phones, I'll answer the pay phone at Lakeline Mall and giggle even though you didn't say anything funny. It wasn't expecting anything, I didn't even remember your name. You hang with those girls that know people and are beautiful and fun and I'm not. You told me not to touch you. That's not something I hear often, if ever. The way you said it was like biting into an eclair and hot lava pouring out; my heat stopped.
When it happens it's not immediate.
There's a sort of gray speck and it spreads like ink on water. It unfurls and curls and that's when the aching starts. The gray is smokier now, like a bar at last call. Edges become blurred and breathing is more difficult. It opens up further and chokes whatever is in its way. "I know this" I whisper. "I know what this is" even though I can't see why, I can't breath and I find no escape from the claustrophobia of my existence. Now is when I start slow, cutting one pill into halves, swallowing the fraction with milk and taking gulping breaths to fight the urge to call out of work and power through this experience. When I was a kid I just thought I was mad; mistaking anger with fear. "I'm tired" I think. I manage myself
