there is a girl standing above me

and i believe that she may want me dead.

but i deserve it, i know i do,

because even as i watch her eat a blood orange,

juice dripping down her chin and mixing with blood i believe is mine,

i cannot help but dream of you.

you were the girl standing over me,

you were the girl eating blood oranges,

you were the girl with my blood on her face.

i loved you in a way i’d never felt before.

i loved you in a flurry of tears and

i loved you even with your knuckles against my jaw.

there was a girl sitting next to me.

she tried to hand me a blood orange,

but my hands were beaten and bruised,

as she had taken them into her own earlier that day

and crushed them.

and when i finally managed to cradle the blood orange

in the crook of my elbow,

i could not peel it,

so she fed it to me.

she wiped the juice from my chin,

where it had mixed with my blood,

and told me that she’d only ever wanted me alive.

you were that girl.

but i did not deserve you, i know i didn’t.

because i saw you behind me in the mirror

of the girls’ bathroom on the second floor

of my old middle school.

and i squeezed the juice of a blood orange into my eyes.

and i convinced myself you were still there,

and i insisted that you loved me.

and when i looked again, you were gone.

i found myself dreaming of her last night.

of acres of skin, wrapped around her like cellophane.

of oceans in her eyes, complete with salty tides made of tears.

i dreamt of the way she tasted;

like acid and smoke.

i felt her hands wrap around mine,

nails tearing holes through my palms.

i heard her speak to me,

calm even as she splintered the very foundation of my love.

we used to fall asleep next to each other,

her feet tangled with mine.

i remember one night spent wondering,

if love could break a heart.

there are 78 things i want to say to her,

but my pleas will always fall on deaf ears.

///

1) i can still feel the welts on my skin from the first time you touched me.

2-78) i can still hear you telling me you love me.

fistfuls of hair lie in my drain,

but they do not belong to me.

they were hers,

before she left,

and now i don't imagine that they belong to anyone.

she was the only person

i had ever loved,

i hope she is not the last.

still, i can't bring myself

to unclog my bathtub.

so fistfuls of hair

lie in my drain,

and i shower in the rain.

you loved me just as i loved you,

like i was made of silver and gold.

you never told me

that you were going,

you simply told me to close my eyes.

and still i could see you leave.

i fell in love with a girl

whose name was the sound thunder makes

when it hits the ground.

she was not thunder, though.

her skin felt like falling,

her lips tasted like what rain should have been.

i am not sure that she was human,

nor was she alive.

for to breathe,

and to possess a beating heart,

is not to live.

she was not meant to fall in love.

she was not meant to kiss,

or to touch.

to inhale and exhale,

to feel the way fingers lock around each other.

she was meant to exist,

but not to live.

so she existed,

and i lived.

and together,

we were broken.