Don't Ever Feel Lonely

What I like best is sitting out in the sun, writing postcards, flipping through polaroids, falling asleep with my arms around you. Waiting for that tremor in my stomach that says, no, that says, yes, that says, it’s too late no no no no what are you doing. Felt an inner tug when he curled up my bed, shook his hair out of his eyes, and said he moved around her in the music. Could have been anybody else and I wouldn’t even have heard. Right? Every time I hear footsteps, my heart skips a beat. I don’t know why but I know why. This won’t happen, I won’t let it.

Button says, don’t hurt him, he seems nice.
She says, do not break his heart.
I say, I won’t.
She says, we all know you will. People tend to fall for illusions. They think themselves in love with you.

She would know. Button bought a unicycle and went to town. I wish my name were Circus, she says. She’d be glittered up to her eyelids, in slick blue shorts and a helmet made from horse hair. She says, the apples are so shiny and full that it makes my insides break. She says, Will you come into the woods, strip down, and paint your cheeks with dirt?

She says, When you’re going mad, is it better to be quiet, or to be loud?


Lighting my cigarette from an ashy stub feels like I’m giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Today, another notorious three hour breakfast. Let’s divide lips and spoon up buttered egg yolk and toasted pita. Brie and bacon. Crackers and chai. Juice.

Bitter Boy broke his eight year fast, sprinkling pieces of maple bacon. His tongue darted, popping out his teeth for Victoria, in vain hopes of a scare and a smile. Victoria said she once kissed a hillbilly in New Orleans. He hugged her right round the middle and whispered promises through his gap teeth. Bitter Boy had been high and smiling in the early hours, bobbing along aimlessly in halls of water, his eyes now wide and painted like a harlequin dancer. “Bacon grease is the best conditioner,” says Bitter Boy, running his fingers through Bruiser’s hair as she tugged away.

Bruiser and I began the morning as twins, but when the sun climbed higher, she emerged in plaid, and Bitter Boy stripped down in the kitchen, plucking at his skin and pulling with insistent fingers. His eyes to treat the day, kohled up to Cleopatra glam. I snapped polaroids of your fingers spreading open the skin of a kiwi and plunging inside, and kissed you in your blue and black shirt and squeezed your fingers and watched you run away. Bitter Boy says, these photographs are of the most awkward party I’ve never been to.

Rosemary’s words flip and twist. She says, “I miss not knowing certain things. When did friends just become people to rant to about whether or not we feel loved or unloved by our lover at that moment?” I unbutton my shirt down to my bellybutton and push my ear up against the door. I hear her echoes. “Do you know who Gia Carangi was?” I still don’t know.