I am a girl touched so deeply by dirty hands

That I have forgotten what it is to be clean.

I am one step too many in the wrong direction;

I am forgetting, I am falling.

I am the moment that you realize they are the same thing.

I am the false bottom,

I am the city of fireflies that rests far below to catch the fall.

I am the shatter,

I am the spaces that rest between the stars –

The loneliest feeling in the world:

My head, my heart.

I am so full that I am empty.

I am so empty that I am full.

I have learned that if I say what I mean when I feel it,

It almost tastes like the last boy that I kissed and meant it –

The same one that is gone now.

I am the cough that rattles the birdcage of my chest,

A solemn waltz of cracked marionettes;

I am suddenly breathing so hard that it begins to taste the same as remembering.

I am writing another sentence that will no longer matter by the end of it,

And like that I am beginning to believe in the things that we do not say;

How these are the things that matter.

Smith-Corona spread across the rug, all cool sea foam green and heavy enough that I can tie myself to it.

My fingers can only find their way across the keys when my heart is broken,

When my head has grown too heavy to rest.

Sometimes I find that I am locked in a room with no way out,

Sometimes I find that I am the one bolting the door.

I am frozen inside a body that I still do not know how to make mine.