You Wouldn’t Understand It, You Aren’t A Mimic. I Miss Crawling Into Other People’s Skin Because

You killed my chicken.

Your digital chicken. It’s a game Heather.

You killed my chicken. And didn’t apologize.

It wasn’t on purpose.

You didn’t apologize.

It’s not a real chicken.

You didn’t apologize.

I’m not apologizing for killing a fake chicken in a fake world. It’s not real babe. It’s just a game, please stop acting crazy.

Don’t call me babe when you don’t care about my feelings. You killed my pet in the game and didn’t say sorry. Even when I’ve expressed it so openly that this matters to me.

It shouldn’t! That’s the whole point. This should not be a big deal it’s pixels on a screen!

You’re being disrespectful.

You’re being insane! Get over the bloody chicken!

I’m done.

Thank god.

With us. With this. You don’t take anything that I care about seriously. You’re so above it all.

You’re breaking up with me over a stupid fucking chicken?!?

I’m breaking up with you because you’re mean. If you killed it and said you were sorry, everything would be fine. You choose to act like a dickhead over so many little things like this and I’m tired of it. You try to convince me not to care about something instead of caring about it with me.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

This isn’t the first time you’ve done this. Remember the cat puzzle?

Oh how could I forget the stupid cat puzzle.

Even now you get so incredibly upset whenever I’m upset about something. You try to shut me down before I can express I’m unhappy. According to you, I’m not unhappy, I’m just crazy for no reason!

You said it, not me.

Oh, goodbye Dereck. Goodbye.

This won’t bring the chicken back! You’re such an idiot.

Right.

I am glad for my misspent youth, my contradictions, my stupid ideas and my fear of stepping out of line. I am glad something wild lived in me once and I did not hide it. I feel no shame, no regret. Only peace that all of me got to exist in this one short life.

I’ve a pin with a ball end pinched between my index and thumb. Ego inflating like boils in me, I pop every idea that I am something good, worthwhile. I wonder if a harsh inner critic is a blessing or a curse as she darts pushpins in my spirit, and punches holes in my identity until I am paper thin and hollow. Light as a feather taken by the slightest idea of greener grass; convinced going anywhere is better than here.

My skin prickles with heat,

Dropping doves on laundry lines

My heart leaps hard against my ribs,

Shelving sonograms in my mind,

Oh dear. I am in love.

I am fickle with happiness. They say you don’t know a good memory is happening until it ends, but I do. I’m acutely aware of how precious the good times are—pair that with the odd feeling I get of being watched by my future self, having dealt with the deaths and tragedies that growing older brings, seeking refuge in the past. I feel anxious knowing it will be over, and that no matter how deeply and fully I cherish the strong legs beneath me, the wind on my face, my parents by my sides, it will end the same. All happinesses are doomed to be memories. And that bitters them for me; when I am at my happiest, and my smile is wide as it is earnest, I still taste the rancor in the back of my throat.

When I was a child I’d only known depression through medicine commercials, where the depressed person was a porcelain wind up doll that had to be wound over and over again to walk. I didn’t really understand it then, tucked away neatly in my television set. Why wouldn’t they want to keep going, always? Why would they need to be wound? And now as I look down at my porcelain foot, I wonder why it isn’t shuffling in front of the other.

Remembering him is like biting glass. I don’t know why I do it, why I keep hurting myself on the sharp details of his shattered memory. His eyes, such a pale blue, had a depth to them you wouldn’t expect like stagnant ocean water. My mouth bleeds as I masticate his face, the way words would leave his mouth; his voice is like rows of pins in my tongue. I can’t help myself but to recall him, over and over again, no matter the pain. I think that’s what draws me to recollection actually, feeling anything again. It’s the numbness that lets you drift into autopilot, living while asleep, that ruins you so much more deeply. Losing a loved one, and yourself along with them.

What happens to memories of broken places? Do they bleed too?

There was a worse fate than death, I found, as the god I once worshipped laid his hands on my very soul.

To be unmade.

In twilight hours, when her day’s thoughts drift heavenly with the receding tide, and fears and doubts rescind, she thinks of her. Her head wet from the sea dampening her pant legs, resting in her lap as a black pearl. She runs her fingers through her short black hair and wonders how it rises underwater, if she could ever see it for herself without drowning. Salt and iron prick her nose. The siren opens her eyes and the moment she looks at her with a tenderness so palpable, her image disappears. Her lap lay empty. The sailor girl’s mind too shy to peer at even the idea of her so flagrantly. She hears the creaking of the floor boards, and inhales the lantern oil burning, and is brought back to dry reality. Skin itching for the sand in the ocean shallow.