i.

you were playing in the pennsylvania woods, hop-scotch, butterscotch, dry-rot hanging in the air. the world was ending but it smelled like carmel so you didn't mind. you were laughing so hard, uniform skirt dusted in water and mud, same with your face, all bruised up hands from falling off the monkey bars of your ghetto park － nobody liked the new one, too many people, made your heads hurt too much. you never told anyone, didn't know the words.

the sky was heavy then, too, wasn't it?

you wouldn't know, why would you; you were enamoured with the way you could peel dry bark off a tree and watch it mold. counting dead birds on the sidewalk, by the train station. creepy.

you smiled, yellow teeth and the oddest eyes (you weren't wearing contacts, they're just like that, the wrong color all the time) you were like a lemonhead, sweet and sour. someone must've swallowed those big dreams whole ; the economy broke it's back when you stepped on that crack on the side of the street, eyes burning, shoulders throbbing with the backsplash of someone else's anger. everyone gets to fight but you, you're docile.

you aren't, though. you're so entry it makes you spill yourself out, tears streaming like a river out of your eyes, sitting in the bathroom and you can't breathe (you really should though, distract yourself, bleed for your evils―) you rip a hole in your arm going to sanity.

you were screaming, mosquito bite summer and summer sick in wood houses on wood beds, skipping class, you were screaming― and nobody could hear but you were. voice raw, strep throat, blue tears, green water at the beach. you didn't like swimming because it made your skin ache -

slit your fingertips on a razor and call it a paper cut (see it's an accident), you called out in the middle of the night, sobbing, holding for something (haamalakh haagoel osee, haamalakh haagoel oy see mikoyrem, yivarekh hazani olem, rifu'hā'em shey'li, vehsheym avóy sie, vehsheym avóy sie, aavrahum ve yitzkhuk―)

lullabyes sound so comforting when you can feel something prickke your skin (you've always been afraid of the dark, creeping out the corner)..

you're in pennsylvania again, older, all wide grins and double digits, gun in hand even though you miss every shot.