slow

This morning I never actually woke up, and yesterday I was never awake, waiting for the hollow bones of my body to fill with the marrow in my lungs and the space in my heart. I took the strings attached to your kite and I cut them deeply, cut them quickly, and waited for the water to run clear. I took every forced conversation etched in my journal and I tore the pages. With fever and haste, I kicked up the buckets of blood and watched them paint you black and blue.

I sat in my shower until the weight of the water drowned me. The glass jar you kept beneath your bed fell from my top shelf and shattered on the tile, the edges of each shard bruised with the shame you sent me in letters, notes, and poems. My toes creeped outside and I watched for you, I waited for you. I drove all the way to work clutching onto my skin that you touched last summer. Red lights always seem much more lonely, and tires seem to float above the ground like lily pads in a polluted swamp where water coasts fluidly.