no i will not cut.
when he laughs with you the way he does and smiles like that when you wave and watches you as you talk you can't help but wonder if he ever thinks "this is so easy, she's it, how am i being so stupid?" you wonder if it's really that simple when he cards his fingers through your hair and fixes your collar and looks at you for three seconds too long. you wonder if he treats you different because you're not someone to flirt with the way he does everyone else, not someone he'd accept a blowjob offer (not that you would) from or someone to talk about those sorts of things with. you two hang so precariously from that thread of in-between, but you wonder if maybe all of it's just something you wonder.
regardless, 'disorienting' seems to be the reoccuring theme that's taking up residency in the cataloguing of the past few days weeks. fumbling indefinitely for words that make it easier for everyone else to understand, and it's never getting easier. you get so sick of being tired and so tired of being sick and feeling like this and being alone and never being able to find ways to make things go right.
it sums up to missing days and days of school and just when you feel like you're ready to go back, someone reminds you that you're better off alone, because that way you can hold your tongue. you don't have to see the looks on their faces or hear the tone of their voices or watch them take everything the wrong way. you shit on anyone who's ever happy, about anything, because you're desperate in your jealousy. rather than leave early to go home and rest like you should, you stay awake and lose hours avoiding the things you need to fix.
friday happens. you all laugh at each other's costumes and skip classes to grasp at straws for fun. lunch finds you in the bathroom alone, locked in the third stall, staring back at the pair of eyes you carved into the door three years go. it makes you laugh every time, your ridiculous and creepy vandalisim. as you try to remember why you did it your gaze catches on an unfamiliar scrawl of ink right next to your thigh.
stop. take a second and reconsider everything.
for no reason at all (or so you're convinced) you feel the sharp inhale as a punch to the gut and your hands scramble for the pen you know you don't have. you want to write now what? and tell me what happens next and i'm afraid of what i'd find because the first command opened the gateway to emotional attachment, gives you the urge to trust in the anonymous.
you skitter through the rest of the day on shaking legs, not knowing what to anticipate more: being alone at home or being alone at the party you're not sure you're even ready to go to. but of course you end up going, of course. you suppose it's better than facing the disappointed stare your mother gives you every second of your life, and you've missed enough already.
there is a palm reader at the party, and it is a whim you indulge. she tells you the things you already know, but maybe you fall into the soft lull of her voice because it's finally human contact, she's the only person who hasn't judged you in what feels like years and it's a chance to shut out everybody else. she holds onto you longer than anyone before you, and as people filter out to watch the girl open her gifts the palm reader looks you in the eyes and tells you that things will get better. the lines in your hands are steady and long and made for the life you know you're meant for. she tells you over and over that it will get better, just be patient, you will be okay and you can't stop the i've been waiting forever for someone to say that that bubbles from your lips. everything is in the five seconds she pauses to watch your face, eyes tracing over the way it's on the brink of crumpling into a mess of relief and shuddering exhales. what probably sucker punches you the most is that it's true. no one tells you it will be okay because everyone's so sure it's the exact opposite of what you want to hear.
but hearing her say it over and over and over releases that cable that's drawn your shoulders so taut. your mind snatches this moment right out of the air and etches it permanently into your head, her gentle voice repeating the mantra that curls around your ear drums and wraps you in the delight of fruitful chance. she graps your hands tightly and tells you you're worth something, you're destined for better and she feels it, it's not something she says to everyone. i like you, she says, and though she's been doing most of the talking and you've just met and you've shown her everything you've been in just one meeting, you believe her.
since then the things she's told you have been circling into the knot at the base of your skull. you respond to touch (you know) and you're a loner but not by choice (you know) and you have too much energy to live the way you do (you know) and you need to find someone to touch you and love you and take care of you since you can't (god, god, you know).
so maybe it really isn't enough to steal skin like this, brief touches that mean nothing to him but everything to you no matter how much you don't want it to. maybe you ought to stop trying to convince yourself that it is enough, that it's all right to settle and hang from your fingertips thinking this is your only chance.
but it's so, so hard, when everyonething else is so out of reach. you can't at all let yourself find comfort in the boys who want to be there for you but at the same time are there for someone else, knowing you and how you let your emotions control you.
there's nothing you can do, you guess, at least not right now. you instead lose yourself in the occasional joint or the high you get from never sleeping, knees drawn tight to your chest and watching the earth wake through half-lidded eyes.