Horrible Things and Their Need to Be Fed - Mena Brazinski

I don’t know how to do things normally or half-assed or in any way that doesn’t kill me a little bit and I’m probably prouder of that than I should be. My health teacher used to try to get me to stop doing things that killed me a little bit, and while his pathetic enthusiasm was Herculean, if I am going to meet an end, I want to belong to it, and I’m probably prouder of that than I should be. I didn’t learn much in his class and I don’t know much about teaching health either, but I know a lot about teaching English, because my mom taught English, so if you wanted I could tell you all about beating metaphors to death and children into submission. My health teacher wasted a lot of conversations about how unprotected sex can lead to unplanned children on me and all I got from that was how glad I am I can't accidentally have children so I don’t end up accidentally beating them into submission one day. 

My health teacher didn’t believe in fertility clinics or vaccines or people like me but he believed in God a lot. He said he believed in God but that he didn’t believe in religion or church. I don’t know how he did that, I don’t know how to put faith in things that aren’t people. My younger brother recently started having faith in God and religion and church and it makes me wonder how much longer I have left with him. I don’t believe in God anymore but sometimes I wish I did because my life is lacking any and all sense of purpose or direction or meaning and God would help with that. I need to stop drinking on weeknights and God would help with that. I should swear less and smoke less and be a better person and God would help with that. 

My health teacher thought no one should have sex before marriage and thought gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married so it was very unclear to me when he thought I should be having sex. I wish I’d asked him. He told me he thought conversion therapy should be legal, and by that I mean he assigned an article about it to the class, just in case anyone got curious about what turned them and needed help sorting it out. He kept a bible on his desk that he thumped more than he should have but I came out to him before I told my parents because he asked and I was tired of lying about it, not because I believe in that humiliation reserved only for us. 

He thought homosexuality was caused by sexual trauma but I felt safe in his classroom because he kept a baseball bat in the closet in case a school shooter came in. He believed gay people were going to hell but he made great cinnamon pancakes on the schooldays before holiday breaks and would give me a Clif bar every day seventh period if I asked him for it even after he knew what I was. Anyways, I miss you, Mr. Arther, and I think you’d understand why my best friend wants to text her ex and why I still think about my mother sometimes. Something about horrible things and their need to be fed. 

If the Government Could Read My Mind They Know I’m Thinking of You - Alex Lake

I see you in the woods and you have a gun in your hand. Not a shotgun or pistol but a BB gun, propped up against your shoulder while you’re propped up against a tree and the tree doesn’t protest but it’s so big, its bark is ancient, and it’s digging into your back because i think it might be the slightest bit resentful about the lack of reverence you’re giving it. You should be looking up. You might be looking at me. You’re not looking at the gun.

You tell me you can’t move, you have to stay and keep an eye out for something scary enough to warrant a gun but fearful enough to run away from a single 4.3 millimeter pellet that only burns like a cat scratch unless you catch them in the eye. I ask what you’re hunting and you don’t tell me. You don’t even say you’re hunting, and can you be if you don’t move, don’t pursue circles against a familiar creature in its familiar land? It doesn’t feel fair to wait for the prey to come, but I’m not even sure if it’s prey or you just like hanging around with a long-barreled justification to warm up with your hands.

Narrative principles state that the gun will go off soon, must go off to fulfill its purpose of sitting still and smooth in calloused fingers, hungry for the gore promised by its existence. Either by your finger on the trigger or mine or maybe the tree spits out more bark and it lodges itself deep in the copper plating and the whole thing backfires in your face to leave a single hole in your cheek, neat and deep. Narrative principles state that I then must remove it, dig low beneath the skin to pluck it from where it rests against the bone that builds your face because that would justify my own being here, my own ability to stand and watch you watch me and watch the gun that’s only half a gun and watch the forest but not the trees. 

I came out here to tell you to come back inside, but inside is four miles north and across a river and I don’t think you particularly want to be inside right now because you can’t turn the safety off inside and there’s nothing to hunt but everything to wait for and waiting is probably done best here anyway because then at least you can be approached, be found in a way that takes more effort than walking through a door and surprises you enough to make you remember what you have in your hands. You think you’ve found it finally, that thing scary enough to shoot and fearful enough to run that could take a little buckshot and ask you to dig it out afterwards. It sits at the tree and waits with you.

I guess it’s better to just stay out here.

the healing works better if i tell it in first person - Hannah Karim

sam and i started dating the summer before high school. sam read the new york times every morning and was the only person my age that i trusted to edit my essays. we first kissed wearing bedsheets as togas on halloween after taking his four year old sister trick or treating. i broke up with him as a result of trying to write out the story of our relationship as a valentine’s day gift two years later.

after sam and i stopped trying to stay friends, i befriended a girl named genevieve because her mother and his mother used the same laundry detergent and smelling it reminded me of a time when i thought people could really save one other.

dating ethan happened too soon after sam. ethan smoked weed every day, but restricted himself from doing so in front of me, which i internalized as an indirect form of affection. for eight months, we spent saturday afternoons watching netflix, while sunday mornings were spent walking to our town center, eating crepes in the cafe on the corner. ethan broke up with me in august after i told him that i  like someone else.

in ap chemistry, michael and i were lab partners. ever so faintly, between titrations, michael’s finger tips would touch my ass. embarrassed, not wanting to make a scene, i said nothing, moving away from him only to feel his fingers against me again. it was always so subtle I questioned if it was happening at all. three years later, winter break of sophomore year, rumors in my hometown arose that he had been kicked out of his frat, having sexually assaulted a girl. 

by senior year, i wanted to date thomas, but he wanted to date her and her had brown hair and hazel eyes, which was nice for her because then idiots on the internet didn’t blame her for the pandemic. she knew four languages and howto call amsterdam home, while i knew how to give a blowjob in the backseat of his mother’s minivan because i hadn’t yet learned that boys don’t like girls who don’t know how to say no.

summers were spent at my grandmother’s house. we sang billy joel in the kitchen while cleaning up dinner and spent hours by the lake, alternating between reading and swimming.  we often took the hudson-line down to new york city. our train rides were dedicated towards stories. grandmother would give me a word like “serendipity” and i would challenge myself to write down all of the smaller words i can make out of the larger one. when time ran out, grandmother would check the notepad, letting me know which letter arrangements were products of my imagination, not to be found in the dictionary. when i got bored of the words, i asked her to tell me stories. she told me about growing up in manhattan, falling in love with my grandfather, and giving birth to my mother, but the time period she liked to talk about most was when she was younger, just out of college, navigating her first teaching job.

after grandmother died, i couldn’t masturbate for a month, scared she might glance down at the wrong moment and see me in the act. grandmother was a smoker, but never smoked in front of me. her house often smelled of febreeze failing to cover the scent of cigarettes. days before she died, grandmother took out a cigarette in front of me, asking me to light it. i did.

the spike - Eric Turner

i have a lot of uncles because my grandparents liked to fuck and some of my uncles are really cool and i took my personality from one of them, but mostly my uncles are men and i hate that. at my brother’s baptism, three of my uncles threw me face first into a snow pile that turned out to be mostly ice and i don’t remember if the pile was blood colored before i hit it or not.

this is not a poem, it is a thesis about violence.

my great uncles would jam their thumb into your throat when you walked past them. they named it the spike, after the similar finishing move as performed by the worldwide wrestling federation’s wild samoans. the spike didn’t really hurt, but it was uncomfortable as fuck and they always did it at the worst times. i learned from my mother, their niece, that the proper response was to shrug it off, play it cool. just keep moving.

today, my professor jokingly rubbed my neck and made a crack about being aroused. it didn’t cause any lasting discomfort, but it was a notable moment.

my ex-girlfriend once pinned my arms down and tried to kiss me. i was half-asleep and she smelled like a long shift and taco bell lunch. i pushed her away. she pushed back, kissed me regardless. when confronted about it later, she told me i was only mad that i was overpowered.

if i had any physical response to my professor, he would likely be dead. if i wanted to, i could have fought off my ex. in both cases, i decided it wasn’t worth violent response.

when i was fifteen, a senior girl who had been held back sat next to me in math. she would sometimes run her finger along my inner thigh; i would remove it. she grabbed my dick once, squeezed. i pushed her off again and the teacher noticed. he was ready to side with me, but i agreed to shrug it off. she was on the verge of expelation and had been a target of racist harassment. i would have been a reason for admin to punish her and didn’t want to be.

when i was nineteen, i went to a concert and a woman grabbed my hips and began to grind on me. i pushed her off, once again, and she pushed back anyway. i turned around but she continued, grabbed my ass, reached around. i pushed her off again. she was with a friend and the friend’s boyfriend. he told me to dance with the girl, i told him that wasn’t going to happen. we knew that if something didn’t change we were going to have to fight and we knew security, in a predominantly white neighborhood, would side with me. we talked it out, i moved.

i used to jerk off while my ex - other ex - was sleeping. i had sex loudly enough in the same room as my old friend that he made a reddit post about it. i slapped my friends ass in eighth grade because it was slap an ass day but i missed and she told me it wasn’t like me and i never did it again.

this is a thesis about violence.

i didn’t get into any fights that needed recording. i’ve punched a handful of people, called a few hits in high school, been tackled a few times. it’s not my favorite thing to do

but

i spent a lot of my childhood getting grown man thumbs jammed into my throat and that teaches you two things. the first is that your boundaries will be routinely violated by people who claim to love you. the second is to take a hit and get up from it.

violence is not the answer.

my friend punched his girlfriend in the face and broke her orbital bone. j slipped his dick in a’s ass and she never came to another party. my friend told me if rape was legal he would breed c. another friend started seeing prostitutes. a was forced into a closet by a guy who lived in her apartment but doesn’t remember. another a’s ex keeps screaming at her. unc stabbed a cop at cuz’s grad party, another cousin molested another and another and another. b called his girlfriend a cunt at the function. my parents scream at each other and my mom keeps throwing shit. my old roommate screams so much he throws up. unc a couple times removed choked his wife til she passed out. every person i’ve been in a class with either assaulted someone or got assaulted.

violence is the question all the fucking time.

i get to be a white man who presents straight. here’s the best part of appearing like a cishet white man: everyone with a gun likes my phenotype.

even better, everyone who rapes people looks like me. they watch football and smoke cigars and nod at me in the gym. they all want to be my friend. they all want to tell me about how much of a bitch their girlfriend is.

violence is a governmental system.

i grew up below the poverty line. the state enacts violence upon my people, my trailer park, at unprecedented rates. where i’m from, people don’t make bail; people make jokes about prisoners raping each other in the shower. sometimes people don’t eat food because they can’t find a job because they couldn’t make bail. sometimes people don’t shower because they can’t get a job because they smell bad because they can’t shower and they don’t digest right because they don’t have water and they don’t have food. sometimes people get hooked on drugs because they have access to drugs but they don’t have access to food or water or jobs and they want to do the drugs because they got raped in prison or by their uncle or by someone they went to class and sometimes we can afford to build clinics to help them stay safe while they do the drugs or even get them off of the drugs and sometimes we don’t build the clinics because we think the people who do the drugs are stupid or because we’re an npr listening fucking liberal who wants there to be drug clinics but doesn’t want them in our backyard because we don’t actually care about people when it’s fucking difficult

and sometimes, sometimes a girl starts rubbing her hand against your fourteen year old cargo shorts in math class because everyone’s been commenting slurs on her instagram and every version of herself that she’s seen is a maid who the man of the house fucks or a trick terrance howard whoops and she knows that no one wants people who look like her in  school and sometimes you let it slide because she deserves a fucking chance and if you call security or the cops they are going to beat the fuck out of her or put her in prison where she’ll get raped because people who are her color are seen by some people as a drug clinic that is allowed to exist but not in their backyard unless they’re being used like a sex toy or a farm tool

and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes a woman is not a bitch or a cunt, sometimes she is a person who is carrying the trauma of life in a hetero system which not only continually subjugates her but relies on her subjugation. sometimes she doesn’t respond as quickly as you want her to respond not because she has nothing to say but because the freeze response is next to the fight and the flight and she has flown as far as she can fly and fought as much as she can fight and yet she is still being told to do all of the work that allows our society to function while still being beaten and bruised in ways that only grab your hips at a ty dolla sign concert and

sometimes, 

sometimes, 

sometimes, 

sometimes,

your uncles jam their thumb in your throat or throw you into a pile of ice and the first lesson you learn is that everyone is as violent as they’re allowed to be and the second thing you learn is that you can take a beating and the third thing you learn is to forgive and the fourth thing you learn is to draw a line.

this is my thesis on violence: fuck you, fight me.

i’mma talk my shit and stand my ground. they can scream in my face, touch my hair, grab my ass; call the cops, file a suit. i got up from the ice pile; i got the perfect phenotype for trouble.

this my thesis on violence: my little brother didn’t get spiked.

XII (Fourteen) - Calvin Yardley

Spongiform ruin of the palace, as bequeathed by the great equalizer of the living and the dead alike. Time, progression and procession by any other name. 

Seated silently in a ward soaked in the sickly scent of urea and kareishu, he’ll linger a while, the first death given to him some odd months ago. He has been dying for some time, starting back when the world had a name and the people therein offered up thanks to great suppliers of grain and vacuums. His wife, as he quietly cracks up at the flicker of an iron ball in his mind, has mourned his first passing since he started to refer to his home of some forty years as a boarding house. 

His wife, who he’s been married to since they finished high school. His wife, who he can’t remember the last time he saw. 

He is dead. A man walking, a very much dead one, a husk of the man he used to be, hobbling around some days and roaring around others, belly full to bursting with tapioca and quetiapine, blood heavy with plaque and lorazepam. The soft spoken thinker, reduced to a man afraid of his own shadow, quick to anger and quicker to blows. 

Hence the antipsychotics, which taste of honey and fill his limbs with lead. It is undoubtedly the gasoline and paint and pipes of his youth that brought him here, along with little white crystals scattered about all the things he liked. Were he a Turk, he’d be delighted, most certainly, at the gelatine and starches, the glucose and the burnt cells of the pancreas. He is no Turk, never even was. 

Maybe he was, in a past life, far from now, munching on British snacks and imbibing complicated brews drawn in from sand-heated cauldrons and pots. Coffee. 

His wife used to make coffee for him. It wasn’t the best that was to be had, but who gives a shit? His wife, who he’s certain has been dead a few years, used to make him cups of black tea and give him little white pills, told him to take them. 

Take them. Maybe in reference to the kids, to Poughkeepsie, a few hours in some direction, get some donuts and some fish, hell if he knew. All three of them, who live with him in his little shack in the woods, where everything smells bad and all the housekeepers are nice enough. Everyone lives with him now, in this place to call his own. 

Place. His mom’s house, bulldozed for a luxury condominium development for university students and affluents of the academic persuasion. He tried, a few times, to go somewhere like that. Never stuck. Never needed to, by virtue of different times. 

Times. All the time he doesn’t have left, all the thoughts left unthunk, ‘cause who’da thunk any of it? Did you think I would think? 

Think. He can’t remember any more. He hasn’t, a while now. No reason to. His brain is too busy, at the physical, chemical, and spiritual level, cannibalizing itself. What a shame it is, to die twice over, the second time an eventuality, looming like the inevitability of taxes or...well...death. 

Death. Do you think he fears it? Do you think he’s even there? Lights are on, but no one’s home. Poor fella fits the definition of senile, and here’s his grandkid, writing soliloquies and ballads of the dying man, speculating and positing the nature of a dying man’s last few months of sapient thought. 

Thought. I have one. What a thing it is, that man is capable of dying so ingloriously. Sequestered away in the broom closet of a hospital, rotting away in beds, dying from the inside-out like a tree or a government. Should man, assured of his dominance over earth, not be afforded the grace of a swift, merciful end when the water reaches the chin, threatening to drown and defile the living form?

Form. He’s been transferred between three different facilities, by virtue of his assaulting of a handful of orderlies. Blows come to evictions, and when nurses turn to orderlies, one is sure that the jig is up. Hence the antipsychotics, which taste like lead and fill his limbs with honey. Honey. He used to call his wife that. 

Wife. What was she called again? 

Again. Am I dying? 

Dying.

The Many Shades of Sisyphus - Calvin Yardley

A machine is born. It is made from dull blades and commercial-grade servomotors. It communicates with other machines, as many machines like it do, through electrical impulse and feedback loops. 

It has one task. Wipe clean the windshield. Do so when the smarter machine, sheltered from the elements, is tugged upon by an even smarter machine. Do so at variable speeds. Do so when weather is inclement. Do so when a different machine sprays antifreeze wiper fluid upon the windshield. The machine does so. And it has no mind, so who can say if it is unhappy? 

A machine is born. It is made from high grade polycarbonate plating and hundreds of thousands of dollars of ingenuity and wire. It is powerful, it is deft, and is alone in the world once given its mission. It has one task. Wipe clean the floor. Do so ad infinitum, as a representation of ancient adages and insurmountable labors. Do so with consistency, so the pools of blood at foot do not spill unto the rest of the floor. Do so with style, so observers compliment the fluidity of motion. Do so, in such a manner, that armchair philosophers contemplate how quickly you would pull your own plug, if given the chance. The machine does so. And it has an inkling of a mind, so who can say if it is unhappy? 

A machine is born. It is made from sinew, keratin, protein, lipids, polysaccharides and water. It is versatile, it is adaptable, and it is fated to die in give or take 80 years time. 

It has one task. Live. Do so with feeling, so that a life may be well lived. Do so with gratitude, so that nothing goes unappreciated. Do so with knowledge, so those that come after may be left brighter than their forebears. Do so with heart, so that ballads may be sung and overtures may be penned. Do so with meaning, built of its own accord, so that none may accuse it of being without chord. 

The machine does so. And it has with it a beautiful mind, so who can say if it is unhappy? Imagine them. Happy.

Trail Guide - Alex Lake

It’s kind of redundant to call a forest a place where people die. You can assume at least one person has died in every forest with a span larger than 2 acres, because that’s just the nature of them. I don’t think I need to spell out the fact that anything you can’t see the other side of, anything you have to enter without a clear, well-defined exit, is just an opportunity for you to exercise just how little critical thinking skills matter once you’re thick into the maw of something that engulfs the eyeline, overwhelms the senses with its utter totality.

When you add a town that just barely escapes the trees’ reaches in some places, a reliance on survival and economy and, god, at the very least firewood to keep a body warm, nobody can prevent a little escapade into those woods. It’s encouraged, it’s needed. Shit, at some point, it kind of becomes a right, doesn’t it? A field of wheat unharvested, a cave spring that’s never seen the light of day, a wild, covered land sitting unturned and unpossessed. It’s like a beauty begging to not be seen, like an invitation for you to just see what it can provide for you.

But forests fuck you up, but not really since it’s you, actually, doing most if not all of the fucking up, because as soon as your brain gets the chance, it gets lazy. Trees, leaves, dirt, it thinks, yeah yeah, categorized and filed sufficiently into a cabinet of background noise that, honestly, barely sufficiently registers when growing up in a place like this.

Your brain forgoes any sense of an instinctual compass it has in favor of sending your feet digging back and back into circular paths, eyes seeing but never really truly discerning the difference between this trunk and the next, because doesn’t every fucking white oak look the same except for that one you maybe passed a few minutes ago with the three crude notches slashed into its bark?

Once you hit that point, the questioning of your surroundings, you’ve officially become Lost. What that means, in an official capacity, is that your barebones hike through the trees to do drugs or for alone time or for birdwatching or deerhunting or human fucking becomes a six hour recovery mission from a group of volunteers that, if they find you, give you a shock blanket and maybe ten minutes of fawning before they’re hauling you back to town calling you a fucking idiot most of the way. That’s really what they mean when they refer to hometown pride, by the way.

This forest, slightly more than other, grander, larger, thicker forests that blanket western New York, doesn’t seem to want to let people go. It will, otherwise what’s even the point of having a county-designated search and rescue team with shiny, emblazoned vests and flashlights with a luminosity just shy of the fucking sun. But the starlings call out for you, layers of mimicked voices warping through the tunnel of your ears that search for something, anything to lend a sense of stability when you know you’re not standing where you once stood, but, if that’s the case, where are you standing now?

So it’s easy to hear, to turn aimless bird whistles into a hey, over here, hey, over here. You never want to listen, if that’s not obvious already, because I can guarantee there’s no solace nor long term safety in a creature that I’ve personally seen adopt the speech pattern of a picnicking companion just to steal a single fucking strawberry. They’re not mean, per se, but cruel as a byproduct of their own personal goals that don’t typically coincide with that of a desperately lost traveler.

Above all, you don’t want to listen because even when you think you see one of those little things flitting through the branches, beating their oily green wings and cocking their heads this way and that, you can never be sure it’s really them speaking to you. Because of this, we strictly enforce our rule of no odd-numbered pairings when (engaging) on this tour, as the chance for vulnerability and the subsequent falling victim to avian and timber trickery is just too high when there’s not a one to account for another.

So parents, please ensure you bring a companion for your lone child to embark on this tour of our town’s beautiful forest, and take careful note of the neon markers that guide your path.

Now, I will remind you once more and for a final time, please do not wander off to feed any animals you may encounter on this trail. While they are hungry, the trees are doubly so.

Haunting Hour: March 9th - Clyde Jastram

How do you tell your loved ones, it started again? You know the thing we thought we once moved passed, has re-entered our lives. 

The darkness is here!! My worst nightmare of all time…My mind. The true essence of a blessing and a curse. What allows me to write is also what takes away my soul at night. Suffocated under these clouds of thought, made by food for the brain but destroyed by my conscious. An everlasting civil war keeps me up at night. Never to rest even as I sleep. Dreams may distract but they don’t stop what's truly going on. Instead, they press pause and give me a commercial break. 

So I ask you, how do you tell your loved ones, it started again? Because it feels like I'm running a never-ending race where the finish line just keeps getting pushed back. Thus, I run faster, I try harder. The hard work barely pays off or doesn’t even pay off at all. 

As I view the world, I feel lonely, I feel like I’m the only one. The one who looks at the world for what it truly is…Disappointing. 

Where all life connects to is death. Whether prolonged or nearing, death is the one who picks up the phone. With an answer of certainty, he grabs you close and hugs you tight. Never once letting you out of his sight. 

Even if you wanted to run, Times up. 

You seem to be confused, I said How do you tell your loved ones, it started again?!! A sadness so deep, that it lingers during the day and takes flight at night. Soaring so high, it takes over you with all its might. 

Darkness pours in and the light is spit out. 

So I beg you, I plee, shed light on my eyes and guide me to the truth!! How do you tell your loved ones, it started again? A spiral so abrasive and overwhelming it takes hold of me and I don’t feel right. 

And No, I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to harm myself or others around me. I just feel meaningless. I need to know there’s more to this world besides “the hustle”. That I matter, THAT WE ALL FUCKING MATTER. 

That these sorry excuses for life we have had to live weren’t our fault. I want an apology from the universe. I want it now! Because the only one who’s answering the phone right now is waiting for me in a carriage around the corner. 

I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be here either. My home is in oblivion, far from all, close to none. Where my heart is at ease but my mind is null. The body is asleep but the soul is transparent. 

Oh! So you don’t know how you tell your loved ones, it started again? Great, because neither do I.

You Said You’d Kill Yourself If You Couldn’t Have Me But You're Still Here - Victoria Zickas

My name is Victoria (Tori) Zickas and I started taking writing seriously in my freshmen year of college. I usually write poetry, but sometimes I write short stories too. I started off as a criminal justice major here at UAlbany and switched to an English major all because of one creative writing class. Anything is possible :)

***

You said on Valentine’s Day that if you didn’t have me, you’d kill yourself. Lock yourself away forever with a lined-up shot to your head. Or maybe you’d crucify yourself like Jesus Christ, with nails squished into your palms and feet, dried blood frozen onto your pricked forehead only because you see yourself as a higher being. 

You said you’d become toxic if you found out I was dating another man, giving me the idea that I am still trapped in a relationship with you. My flight or flight still goes off when I think of you. I don’t have a choice in my thoughts because you infiltrate them by sending me bouquets and new, black work shoes. I hate that I still get texts from you, ringing on my phone, ringing in my hand, ringing in my ear. That same ringing in my head like an alarm. 

Am I not allowed to exist because I gave you that chance in Troy? When you came to our first date 15 minutes late and I wore a dino sweater because didn’t think it was a date because I didn’t think you were attractive enough for one because your eyes reminded me of my dad’s. You told me you thought that I was unattainable. Maybe you like the unattainable, actually, you like the idea that I am unattainable but lucky for you, I ignore my dad’s phone calls. But I think that's obvious. 

Do you feel ashamed when you hear my name? Because I know you say that you fumbled me. Do your friends know? Did you ever talk about me to them? I would assume so, but not in the way that I tell my friends about you. I tell them about all of the things you put me through and every time I don’t get a response back, I get a horrified, contorted expression instead. I remember when I first told my friend Vanessa that me and you were dating. In front of you, she pulled me into her and whispered: “You can do better.” 

Why do I miss you? I miss you so much that I feel bad when I even think of not responding to your texts, I can’t even make myself return those stupid shoes you sent because I know you bought them and that they were for me only, not for some random person to buy, not knowing the history that led up to them being sold in an outlet store.

I could block you and delete your number from my phone. I know that my phone gives me that option, but you do not. You know where I work, you know my boss, and you know my address. You have access to me whenever you want. You don’t give me the option to remove you from my life or my thoughts. I am forced to talk to you because I know that if I don’t I’ll get another package or a plethora of texts about how I ignore you and that you wish me to be happy and have a better life without you. 

I am waiting for the day when I do block you, in fear, not in confidence. I know you would never hurt a fly and you’ve never laid a hand on me but you’ve threatened me with the monster that subsides in you, that hasn’t been let out in years and I don’t know what kind of crazy it is. I’ve seen the type of crazy that eats at my battery by a hungry man, I’ve seen the type of crazy that breaks into my house and puts everyone in danger, and I have seen the type of crazy that beat my mother while I slept. 

I don’t want to date or even look at a man, so you have no worries, I know it will be like that for a while because I know myself. I know that there will be a day that my love for you will scream through my chest and bleed into a text message because everything screams when it dies.