She didn’t know that my heart was a sandstorm waiting to open her skin in a desert of cuts. She didn’t know the animal that waited in my stomach, silently shredding the walls. For her, my heart wore small white shoes and carried a purse, went to bed early. I wanted to shoot myself into her arms so she understood the need to crash cars with me, to tear up pavement because we were beautiful.

Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.

She broke my heart, so now I have to write about her forever. It made everything different. It's something that can only happen once.

Oh my God, Michelle thought, I think we’re making love. It was a term everyone barfed at. No one wanted to make love, people wanted to fuck, to take each other’s skin apart with knives and pin it back together with needles.