Young Writers Society

all i know is that it is cold in your basement.
i can't feel anything but the space where she used to be
and the fingernails lodged in my spine.

i remember how she pressed her palms
on the small of my back, giggling, "are my hands cold?"
sorries spilled out like insulation from my walls. "yes."
i still press on my bruises. i can never get
the hang of a temporary tattoo.

time isn't concrete like a lot of things, you know.
that’s something people tend to remember.

jade,
you are just another lighthouse.
open your eyes, open them;
it is only you for miles.

she looks at me with those big blue eyes,
so soft in the dim light of our living room that i almost
forget what she is. vile, a monster. i almost forget who i am,
caught up in nostalgia for the girl next door,
the old familiarities of an even older life.

i broke my arm the summer of my junior year;
sometimes i still feel it aching. i remember hearing
the crunch on impact, feeling the concrete warm on my skin,
the scrape and the drag. she signed my cast with
a pink sharpie and hearts all around.

i want to grow new skin. she says i ruin everything i touch.
i imagine she is already a disgusting thing.

her brow swallows weary eyes
in my direction. she beckons you in, makes a home
in your ribcage, worms her way into every crevice.

every time i shut my eyes, i see it just like the movies;
she's dead, mouth full of blood, leaking like a faucet.

i'm all teeth and lympth nodes. she knows this.
there is not as much violence between us as i would hope for.
i want to bury what i remember of her by the train tracks,
the ones near her old home. we spent a year there, unmoving.
we knew each other like no one else did;
the center of where i am, how i am, when i am.

i can taste my name on everyone's lips,
bitter, unfaltering. she beats me into singularity
and i figure i should be grateful for it.

she oozes in through
the back door like smoke, sweating and cursing.
i appear in the living room like an apparition.
the curtains are drawn again.

she tears her cuticles off
while i beg her to stay without words.

the lamp-light struggles to reach my eyes
through the darkness. she leans in my direction,
kisses me one last time; i can see the yellow of her teeth,
all in slow-motion. love is oppressive, she says.

yes, but i try not to let her see it.
i think of her in bloom.