i.
the angry red lines marring my skin was poetic. you told me the best writers were tortured. they all had dark and sorrowful souls; i was doing everything right. you said it was okay, i was okay. you helped me take the blades out of razors, helped me find the right places to hurt. told me to clean the blades because infection was ugly.
you applauded the blood i could cut out of my skin, you told me to press it into my journal, to stain the white paper with my spilled sorrow. it was a sort of trophy, a reminder. i wrote down the dates, i wrote a thoughtful word or two. it was poetry, a sad story in the making. it was beautiful.
you told me you would be there for me. we would talk through the night, whispering words of encouragement. skinnier is better,you’d whisper, showing me the number on the scale. i would agree and we wrote out the pounds and the calories. you handed me a toothbrush as i knelt over the white porcelain basin. i don’t like green, i remember saying with a sort of pettiness in my voice. you gave me a new color and kept watch while i spilled out my guts and breakfast.
ii.
we kicked off the ground, flying into the air on a creaky swing set. i could see heaven from up there. you fell onto the ground and i came running. you said you had meant to fall. i didn’t understand it. you said the concept of falling was the best part about flying.just like icarus, you said.
you told me my pain would be useful for the future. we were two sad girls, two poets. two girls against the world. i turned my blood into ink and wrote. i wrote about the pain, the hunger for something more. i wanted a better life. you told me happiness was overrated.
i stopped. i threw the silver blades onto the ground, i let the cuts heal. i began to write. you screamed at me, told me i would be boring without my pain. you were beautiful, you were something, for once in your life. i threw away the schedules, the little post-it notes with calories and goal weights written on them. my throat burned and ached. my finger itched for the toothbrush.
i washed out the blood stains growing on my sheets, ate a full meal. i pushed you away, desperate for the alleged cliche of happiness. you came back every time. you kissed me, apologized. told me it was a mistake. you were trying to get better too.
i remembered the yelling, the screaming. i thought of the blades you gave me to me as gifts, your alcohol breath, and the cigarette holes you burned into my mind. you were poison, and i drank it up like an addict.
iii.
you crawled into my bed in the night, kissed my neck. apologies spilled from your lips. i forgave you. maybe the sad look in your eyes weakened me, or maybe i missed you. you were my most treasonous sin. a drug i couldn’t get off of, the next drag of an addictive cigarette. i exhaled you into the morning air, your name on my lips like a prayer. you were the best thing that ever happened to me.
iv.
we ran into the dark, blind. we had no destination, no place to go. you move forward and you endure it, you told me firmly. sometimes you were a land mine that i had to carefully get around. i was cautionary steps and movements, lowered gazes, and sucked in breaths. you were smashed bottles, burnt out cigarettes, and narrowed eyes. you existed loudly. you weren’t afraid.
i admired you. i envied you. i feared you. i loved you.
v.
we blew smoke rings into the open air on rooftops. you stood on the very edge of the world, looking down at everything with a smirk. i took a moment to take another puff before running to you. you knew something they didn’t. you were surviving, you were killing yourself slowly. you were drunk and high. i begged you not to jump. falling is art, you insisted. i protested, screamed, cried, yelled. you didn’t listen. just like icarus.
vi.
you haunted me like a ghost. maybe you weren’t really gone. time froze in place once you left. i dreamed of you much too often. you yelled at me in my dreams, told me to pick up the blade. lose the extra pound, buy another pack. i listened to you.
vii.
sometimes i thought about the gentle touches, the delicate words you used to comfort me. then i thought about the slaps on the face, the shoving, the screaming. what was real?
viii.
i danced on the line of life and death. you whispered in my ear that i was adventurous, daring. no one remembered icarus until he was swallowed by the sea. i realized i was already being consumed by the ocean, swallowed whole. you weren’t teaching me how to live, you were killing me. i was drowning and you had convinced me this was what it meant to truly live.
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