there is a man i know who gets sick for fun. he tricks his body into lying in bed with a stuffy nose like a ripe cherry. he asks me for help. sometimes he vanishes into the soft covers. he dreams of his dead dog, the one he is named after. then days later, his weakened hands hit by hard door and he is alive but not well. he is ill. his body creaks like a house settling, and he cries into his palms and the tears drip onto my bare feet. i want to hug him, but he stands in the corner where i can't reach him and begs for his body to deteriorate, like a pile of unused firewood. the worms crawl in and our of his eyes and he grins a grimace that i can't understand because my body is healthy and young and sprite. i am like a deer that dodged the rickety vehicle, swerving with the bleary-eyed driver, while he got smacked years ago, and lay dripping into nothingness in the cold, swampy ditch.

there is a girl i knew. she was little when i first met her and her glasses were as big as mine. we both walked around with full moons on our eyeballs, laughing at all we couldn't see. we jumped off of rooftops (okay, they were short rooftops) and walked down to a creek where we lived until we found human bones, half buried in the tiny rocks and dirt, and flew back home. we slept together every night. we weren't afraid of touching. we woke up early and walked with the sun, and yawned with the birds. we ate bottle caps and drank strawberry sodas and laughed so hard our food fell out of our mouth. we acted out scenes me made up, consisting of an injured women, and things changing, in every scene, something changed. she fell in love with a villain. he turned her hair black and her voice low. then she fell in love with a squishy man, like a sea creature without a face. he gave her a baby, put it inside her belly which swelled like a wave, ready to crash. she came to me and pushed on it and said she was saying goodbye and i needed to, too. i cried for three days. i couldn't even think of fishes or seaweed or baby crabs. then the baby died. she whispers to me dates that i should hold her hand, tells me she gets sad sometimes when she sees tiny feet. she won't give me an exact time or day so i never know where to find her, or even what to do with i do. she hangs out with pieces of glass and stone that she picked up from the beach, weathered and heavy and dusty i don't know how to talk to them. they sit in their wonderful mosaic, and my girl, who i've known since she was a girl, is hardening into one of them too. there is a gaping hole where her belly used to be. she sticks her hands inside of absentmindedly and digs around. it's a habit, she says, i'm not looking for anything. she woke me up today and said, "weekend! we're celebrating me." i don't know how to talk to her. she puts little shards of glass in her eyes to be like her friends. i am too soft and alive. i am too whole. i don't know if i can be there.