It was some saturnine tradition. We were always watching the sky whisper, a summer storm chanting to the sleepy lake. Sing me to darkness, a soar towards death, frantically grasping beneath a blue spring, your mother, and his arms. I didn’t dare look. Peeking between fingers. Gasping and heaving, the sun set below to the places even you can’t see. The sky became blankness, a space that fills and leaves you empty. It consumes you, starting from your toes – pins and needles – past your shins, your wrists, your cheeks, and finally over your head.

Breathe easy, I am here.
But what have I become?
I am painted over,
Discarded, caught between your mattress and sheets.
A part of the monotony
Trapped in your cacophony

The cure, now the cause
No time to pause
My flaws – you’ve changed
Or have I?

Count them.
Each second clings
Sticky, like the mud that you
So desperately scrubbed from your skin
Sore, like my heart, arms folded
“I’m cold” across my chest

It’s something
I feel
I
should
know
how
to
fix.

But I don’t want to let go.

plucking the petals,
he loves me, he loves me not.
and then there were none.

even skinny girls
cannot avoid the pressure:
think thin, think thin, think-

Let me write you into a fantasy,
spin your fingertips through a maze,
weaving the freckles on your arms into
the things that you crave.
The frustration will shatter
like the plates you have always secretly wanted strewed
across the kitchen floor.
Glass dust rests
in the creases and,
though you warned me to wear shoes,
remain endlessly embedded in my heels.
I will lift up my legs and let you see,
to try to catch a glimpse of your own reflection,
the sparkle past your eyes that match the glint
of glass in my skin.
“See?” I would say,
arms tight around your chest, eyes
clenched shut buried
in the damp nape
of your neck.

Let me become your time vessel.
Rewind, two years,
you are still you and I am still me,
pressed up against the corner
of one of your kitchen counters.
Your ghost whisper lingers
in my ear,
“You’re giving me goose bumps.”
I will bring you through time,
jumping moment
to moment,
a rush of feeling settling in
the pit of your stomach.
You are blindsided,
tangled in the clutches of each second wasted
and ignited into gray ash.
When I am your time vessel, those seconds will be collected
and stored, so you can replay them over
and over and eventually
you will understand
the implications,
you will find the meaning,
you will learn to be happy again.

Let me count your bruises.
Red-faced and breathless,
you push the world away
only to fall back into the carpet again.
Each exhale jagged but controlled,
a bead of sweat forming like tears
against your wrinkled forehead.
An instant clouded by exertion, hearing nothing but
the sharp intake of breath.
I will lie next to you with my hair
above me, hands cupping ears.
And as you lift
your shoulders
off the ground, I will count for you.