My grandma was a teacher and as a kid she'd take me into the lounge at school and let me photocopy my hands.
I'd stack those warm papers in my arms and carry them home like proof of my palms was my only license to exist.
I got my driver's license many months after I turned sixteen because my driver's ed partner wouldn't show up to our mandated drives.
My mom would drive me to soccer practice at the Symanski's house and I hated every minute because I couldn't run as fast as anybody else.
I wanted to escape back to a time before I existed, hoping my mom felt the echo of my feet in her womb with each miserable kick.
I was born kicking, the excruciating ecstasy of being alive overwhelming. In the hospital, my mom numbed with an epidural
but I numbed with oxycodone. My car crash enfolding my photocopies and driver's license and kicks into an image of a person made up of moments
like bones. When I was released I couldn't sit up or lay down without feeling the fractures within me. I refused to keep taking the pills even though doctors couldn't do anything else for my brokenness. I refused to throw them away too.
Heaven never felt so much like hell. My only relief lay down a hole I knew I could never crawl out of.
Desire is its own form of suffering. Down the throat of wanting, I go consumed. The good thing about being dead is that it lasts forever.
I remember my grandma's perfume.
