I Ate The World Once But It Was Too Big So I Had To Cut It Into Thin, Neat Slices
I sit cross-legged on the sidewalk waiting for the bus. There is a girl sitting on the curb besides me, smoking a cigarette and chewing gum. I can smell bubbles from five feet away. A car honks at us and she turns to me, rolls her eyes, I say, I hate this city, she says, I know, right? She has a red skirt and black hair and I think Snow White. On the bus, the driver hands me a transfer and out of habit I look behind me to hand you one but no, I am alone. Rain beats the windows. You used to be the sort of person who could make things less volatile but I was always too much, and sometimes I’d just lie there in your messy sheets and you’d be sleeping next to me and I’d touch your teeth lightly with my finger or maybe, if I found the courage, your face. This is something that I did. I cry at the thought of you and a woman twice my age is reading a book called The Quest For Love: Are There Actually That Many Fish in the Sea? and I want to tell her lady you don’t know my life. I knew you liked to be touched between your hipbone and the jutting edge of your stomach — old polaroids at the arcade, 2002, you’re walking skin and bones. This is not a quest for love this is, am I on the southbound or northbound bus? This is, I get off and I see the red skirt blend with the girl’s seat. I was that girl at the party who was drunk but you fucked me anyway. You said I don’t have the guts to run away so I booked a ticket for the farthest place I can go without crying myself to sleep and silently say a goodbye that you will never hear. Look I’ve run out of pocket money the shoes you bought me are muddy. You took my hair down from its ponytail and right when you tucked it behind my ear, left, you said, You will grow up to a be a really strong girl. But my bones are breaking and I pull the string and get off the bus.
