sjsprWriting

There’s blood on your wrists

and you don’t know how it got there,

but it got there. You think the knife by your feet might have had something to do with it, but it’s clean.

It’s clean, and it always has been.

But you feel light. Loose-limbed.

As if all your loss and all your pain were pouring out of the gaping wound

and making you float.

Okay. So, there is no gaping wound. There is no blood, there is no knife.

But it is so easy to just pretend like I can’t wrestle out of your arms this time. Like they are forcing me to stay, like I don’t have the strength to escape from you,

suddenly

A crowd. A city. We’re in the middle of Time’s Square, and there’s a thousand of you.

There’s none of you.

There’s one of you.

But I can’t find you. I am in a constant state of not finding you.

So tell me about the night we became people again,

standing under the stars that all spell out the

same words.

Little words, words too small for any hope or promise,

not really soothing but soothing nonetheless.

And I’m sorry.

Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the

scene at the bottom of the stairwell

and how I ruined it all by saying it out loud.

Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

to make a monster that will do as I say

or love me back.

I’m not really sure why I do it, but I do it. There’s a question in everything I touch.

Something about love, poison,

whatever.

Just take a number.

I’m sorry I’m such a lousy story.