she came up behind me,
curled her long fingers into my scalp
****** in air through her teeth,
and lowly she said,
"How long has it been since you've showered?"
embarrassment is an understatement.
I laugh, shuffling nervously in my seat,
feeling beyond disgusting
replying with
"sad."
she repeats the word back, tasting it
as if it were a question,
as if she didn't know
then she said it quieter.
"sad. i get sad too. try to take one tonight, okay?
do it for me?"
i hold back tears
for reasons I'm not yet sure of
and breathe.
I want to be strong enough to do it
but I'm not sure that I am

it's raining again.
It's been raining a lot lately.
I rush outside with jars usually,
tonight I sit under
and I fill myself up.
my hair clings to my neck
my face
my soul.
I close my eyes,
dipping myself in and out of
the sky's tears
in hopes that she'll never recognize
the difference if I were
to be extracting tears of my own.
There will soon be no distinction
between me and the wet.
catching a breath, I peer up
I blink so much I'm surprised I can find the clouds
They shield Gaia from the cold
I count the stars, though I mistake
the majority of raindrops for the plasma.
So I tilt down,
face to Hell
my hair curtains around me
as if a cat had torn them into nothing but
clumpy pieces of string,
and recognize the puddle of a person,
through blurry sockets,
that I can no longer hide from.