I do my best friend's mascara in the bathroom of the funeral house.

I follow her when she stands up, eyes dry and breath shuddering.

Her hands are shaking on my thighs as I smooth out her foundation, layering concealer over the bruises beneath her eyes. I'm sitting on the counter in the chapel's bathroom, pallettes and tubes and brushes scattered around us, and Kit's standing between my knees. One of her fingers curls in my belt loop, tightens til her knuckles are white. I put down the lipstick to hug her.

She doesn't cry, and I don't let go.

My best friend’s father is dying.

We don’t talk about it.

Here's the thing:

My job is not to talk about it. There's something in the set of the clouds, the flicker of the lights above us, that changes more than I could possibly try.

My best friend’s hands shake too much to do her homework, sometimes.

We don’t talk about it.

Instead, I braid her hair before class. I do her eyeliner when she can barely hold her fingers straight, sitting on the sink and rambling until she can breathe again.

My best friend's world is falling apart.

We don't talk about it.

if you were to drown,

you would give in.

(i've drowned before, you know,

caught in a tangle of line

and trying to swim away.)

here's what everyone forgets about drowning -

you can't save yourself,

in the end.

you just hold your breath,

stare up,

try to find the sunlight through the water.

(when i drowned, i forced my eyes open:

water pressing in all around me,

my lungs exploding inside,

and i couldn't find the sun)

(i did not save myself, remember,

someone else hauled me up,

and the knife they used

to cut me loose

left scars in the name of surviving)

when you drown,

you cannot save yourself.

you will be there,

lungs aching,

til someone comes to cut you free

There’s two answers for this, I think.

When I’m young, really young, my sister takes a picture:

my brother, six years old and grinning.

I’m standng on his feet, unsteady and tiny,

with dual vice-grips on my brother’s hands.

It’s the first time I hold someone’s hand on purpose, I think.

Then, when I’m eleven:

there’s a boy, who thinks i’m pretty cool.

He holds my hand on some school hike,

tenative and hopeful,

and helps me scramble up a big rock we see.

It’s sweet, and it’s almost enough.

t,

No one told me, the first time, what had happened.

Instead I was nine and sitting on the foot of your hospital bed, knowing something was wrong. But god, we had been through so much by then, hadn’t we? You were fourteen but you looked so much older, washed out on those white sheets, and I didn’t want to know what happened. The gauze on your wrists tickled my face when you brushed my hair back, and I just wanted to go home.

You didn't tell me what you had done.

Instead, you got me high, seven years later, smoking pot. And your daughter is asleep across the hall, eighteen months old, and this is a bad decision but we’re making it anyways, because she’s already fucked by genetics, a little weed’s not gonna make it any worse. You told me about it, about how much it hurt and how much it wasn’t worth.

Do you remember? The picture in Delilah’s room, above her crib: You and me in black clothes. I’m young enough to still be blond, your hair is bleached white and cropped. Our sister is blurry in the background, walking with her head down and our grandmother’s necklace swinging.

I hope you know I didn’t scream, that last day.

So I’m sorry, for whatever I did. I loved you, and I wish that I didn’t have your birthday tattooed on my wrist like a monument, I wish I didn't have your blood splattered on the hem of my old shirt, I wish your daughter never saw, I wish life hadn't been such a bitch to us, I wish you had made it.

For what it's worth: I love you.

- z

When I was six, my grandmother tells me

she will be an old stone.

In all of my endless, six year old wisdom

I tell her that a stone is a very boring thing to be.

She laughs,

swings me around,

and tells me I will understand,

someday.

When I am sixteen, my niece wears

an old topaz bit, set in silver on a rusting chain.

It was my grandmother's,

maybe, probably.

I'd never seen it til the day after she died, hanging on her mirror.

My grandfather tells me

she wore it every day

tucked under her collar.

And so,

I have a piece of uncut garnet,

set on a silver back,

tucked under my collar.

I think, one day,

I'll be an old, old stone.

You know, in lots of ways, that your parents are finally spiraling, but it's the quiet that really sticks.

The yelling stops.

There are no more broken cups or ripped up papers.

Your mother switches to the night shift, and your father brushes past her in the mornings without a word.

You get the feeling that you are supposed to be quiet, too.

Quiet doesn't fit your bones right, after that.

this is all:

history in the hands of a pariah

and god i

hope it's bitter enough for you.

(these words are

heavy

and i am losing my grip)

i am sixteen,

and sometimes poison just

curls

behind my teeth and down my throat and in my lungs

it bubbles in my veins

and i cut it out with a razor blade

(i am losing my grip)

my fingers tells stories

broken bones

and carelessly ripped knuckles

lost to the bit of the universe called

emotion

(i fall)

We are nothing but broken

galaxies.

Ripped up bits of supernovas, torn

from the empty endlessness:

dumped in hollow shells to pass as

human.

(it is no mystery why we

fall

apart

the way we do)

To be human is to bleed

the blood of old gods.

humanity is not meant to be

a weakness

(we were not meant to be contained,

we were not made to be

contained,

I

was not made to be

contained;

how dare you try to

stop

me.)