Stars Crumble Under My Hands unfinished

I know you’re watching me. The ceiling chips and falls under my fingers like stars scratched from the night. I get dry paint under my nails and it sinks into my skin. There is no blood. I am not satisfied. The paint is white. It does not suit me. You must know that. I shouldn’t pick at the ceiling that way. I do.
It feels flat and flaked against my palm. I am afraid because I can touch it this way. I am afraid for it because it is in my hands.
I twist on the shower and put out my palms to feel the water. It is hot. I do not step in yet. I wait until it is softer.
You’re leaning against the counter. Your white coat is lying across the windowsill. I put my palms on you and you are warm. You suit me very well. My hands are melting into your arms. They are rude and rough and do not wreck you. When my hands are in your arms they are you and they are perfect.
I turn back to the shower and hate my hands again. In the second grade, a girl tried to teach me to read palms. She showed me her sweetly curved head line, heart line, and life line. She said mine were wonky, like scribbles on my palm. I slapped her. lose control sometimes.
The water is warm now. I pull my dress over my head and you look down because you are shy. I wish you wouldn’t sometimes. You stay because you are always with me. I step into the tub. Butterflies fly down and kiss me. They are warm. They breathe against me and suddenly I am awake. I am breathing.

I fucking hate my ID. I stayed sober for my driving test. I look like a bloody idiot. I like my eyes the way they are. I like them red and rude and judging the fuck out of you. I like my arms cut up, every inch like a little ruler. I fucking like it that way.
I hate my ID.
I handed it over the receptionist. She smiled. I smiled back. That’s how the world works. She was probably having a shitty day, and I was definitely having a shitty day. She told me to wait. I told my mom to leave. She left.
I don’t have a sob story for you. I’m not struggling. I mean it sucks but I don’t really deserve to be going to a therapist. I’m not even an addict or anything. I’ll stay clean long enough to get the therapist off my back. I’m not here to stop.
A thousand fucking bucks doesn’t exactly compare to a really good hit.
I’m not an addict. I just suck at economics.

I reach my hand against the shower curtain when I’m done. I wait while you look at me. You reach your hand out and put it against mine. I press my lips against the plastic. So do you. Your hand is warm through the wet curtain. It is throbbing with your heartbeat.

Doesn’t really compare to your heart racing, to every vain in your head throbbing, opening your mouth just enough to let the air wander in and out, in and out again, kissing the atmosphere with your tongue.

I left the water in the bottom of the tub, like you said, like every time. It looks green, licking the porcelain tub, grasping and falling. I sit and smile up at you, your hands on my shoulders, kneeling in the green water. This is when you lower me, slowly and carefully you hold me under the water.

Your skin is crawling and alive, making room for you, making room for the atmosphere to twist inside your lungs.

I open my eyes and I can barely hear you whispering to me, haunting me under the water, your voice tortured and gargled and soft.

The world is exciting when you’re allowed to live in it, to have it within you, its ugliness, your ugliness.

“I’m keeping you clean….”

Polluted air.

Green water.

I fucking hate staying clean.

You helped me dress for my appointment.

She was sitting in the corner of the room when I left. When she looked up at me, she looked surprised. Fluorescent bulbs made her eyes watery. She looked like a fucking puppy with a little red nose. She should brush her hair. Her bottom lip was too big. Maybe you just don’t see a lot of good looking girls around psych wards. Maybe I wanted to kiss her.

--

I try not to bite my fingernails. When I do, you point it out. You tell me it’s dirty. It’s gloomy out. It’s always gloomy out. The grass is flat and gray and the sky is flat and white and when I touch it, it falls apart in my hands. This is why I think I must be an angel. They have powers like that. I’m not a very good one though. I always break these things. You tell me not to touch. But I love when the clouds get under my nails. Sometimes it makes them bleed and it suits me very much. Blood is clean.

You walk me back home. You kiss me outside my door, like in movies, like I’m pretty and like you’re my height. I am tall for my age but you are much taller than me. Maybe I will model someday. I would need better hair. But you come in, because this is where you stay. I am a guest. I am a very lovely guest. You tell me so. Our home has big windows and sometimes it is not gloomy if I wake up late for my appointment and sit near the window. I’d coat myself in yellow and I would sit wondering if my skin would tan and my hair would get white highlights and if I had a flower in my hair, if it would grow. I would wonder if I could grow too, and my legs would stretch across the floor and my arms would touch the ceiling and I would be massive and beautiful.
I am tall for my age. But I feel so small. I feel so small against you, when we’re going to bed.

Look, I’m not a creep or anything, and I wouldn’t say I was following her. But it’s a good fucking thing that I did.

You’re sleeping already. Your chest is skinny but big enough for my head.

She was walking down the hallway and this little fucking paper just falls out of her dress or something and so I grabbed it. I was just going for a walk, she happened to be ahead of me. I thought maybe I could talk to her, but I didn’t. The paper was a lotto ticket.

I can’t sleep. I feel jittery.

She won. She won a hell of a lot. My first thought? Total fucking score.

I can see shooting stars out my window. They’re so big they hit the road, they crash sideways from the atmosphere. They are like me. They are like me, they are white in the middle of the gloominess, and I lift my head out of your dark t-shirt.

Maybe I’m really getting brainwashed at this therapy crap. Maybe she just looked too much like a fucking puppy. But I only followed her again to give her the ticket.

“They’re haunting me…Wake up! Wake up! They’re haunting me! They want me! The stars, the stars…” I had a feeling like going home. I was not a guest, I belonged very much.
“Home! Home! Home!”

I’m not a snoop.

You get up and come to the window but you’re not looking out the window.
“Look! Look! Home! Home!”
You tell me it’s just fucking headlights. You’re breathing fast and your neck is pulsing.

I peeked into the window to see if she was home. She was on her bed, breathing hard like she was in a panic, a purple mark straight across her cheek. I wanted to cover it with my hand. She didn’t see me.
I’m getting fucking soft. And then I drove away.

--
I don’t do love. I do fixation. She wasn’t back at therapy the next day. I still hadn’t given her the ticket. The money started looking real good.
I have never had a girlfriend. I’d never been laid. I try to weigh my fixations, tried to rationalize why I waited for her at the office. I was staying clean for now, and maybe it was working. I might not be scummy enough to spend someone else’s lotto ticket. She might have great legs and maybe I was horny.
But I don’t think that was it.

You let me come back in bed. You wrap your arms around me and I stare at the wall. You lean forward and your breath stains my neck. You smell like mouthwash. Sometimes you make me shiver. Sometimes you make me feel soft. Tonight you make me shudder. Tonight your hands are on me and I’m a part of your perfection again but our chemicals aren’t aligned and they spit and protest and I want to sleep for days.
My face stings when I cry, so I don’t.

--
I didn’t last long.
She came up in my thoughts, like fingernails on your gut, skimming your insides, present and intrusive. They dripped down like paint from my head and coated my body in a slow and steady rush of calm alertness, underwater existence, stretching out your limbs to open your lungs to experience. The paint coats your ribs and form waves that crash against the walls of your stomach, an inward abstract.
That’s when I knew I needed a hit.
People want to believe life is romantic. It takes them two weeks with the same person to realize it’s not. Then they move on, believing the next time will be different. People are idiots.
Still, I wanted to enjoy the next two weeks. I wanted two weeks of her crazy hair and her paper collarbones and long legs. I wanted two weeks with all of them against my mouth.
Because after that, reality walks in on you, and you’re nothing but two kids with their pants down who thought they were in love in the back of a friend’s car. You realize you don’t know her, you can’t love her and all you ever touched was her body. There are scarier things to touch and you know if you did, it would hurt somehow. Two weeks of romance, that’s all that ever exists.
Jesus, I was fucking horny.
Where was my fucking hit.

The stars are coming down again.

I went out that night. I had my friends in the back seat. They pre-gamed without me, enough not to realize I was taking a “special long way around.” I never liked alcohol anyway.

I don’t wake you this time. I try to keep still. I try to close my eyes but the light from the stars is slithering through the window and touching my ankles.

I thought I’d just sit there for a minute. I hadn’t planned how I was going to talk to her. All I knew was a wanted to see her, and maybe her window was open. I figured she could use a night out I guess, and maybe I’d get a glimpse of whoever was fucking up her face that way. Fuck. Like I was going to fucking bust in like fucking batman. I started to drive away and stopped again. My friends were on their phones in the backseat, they didn’t seem to care. So, I waited. I just waited.

I creep out from under the seats and go to the window. I try not to breathe. You stay sleeping.

I saw her face.

The light heats the ground and slides up my cold feet and I stand to watch the beams fitting into the darkness and landing on the road.

I got out of the car.

They are like me.

I started walking to her, my sneakers getting wet in the grass, I didn’t think much, I just went up to the window.

Someone like me.

I didn’t want to turn around.

I see him coming toward me, a beam who is a person who is like me. The stars crash around him and he is smiling and I think I understand.

I watched her put her hand to the glass. I put mine up against hers.

I think I understand.