From Heaven To Hell

I was five and cotton splint eyes told me that 'asphyxiation' couldn't be contagious, and there's no way it was even a disease. I was made of bubbles and yellow keyboards and metallic legos, and  I sounded out the big word 'asfixingation' and I told him that fixing broken things was never a bad thing.

        He ran away from me then.


I was seven and glass bones told me that when God got jealous he stuffed people's lungs with fabric nooses and offered to share heaven with them if they'd be his friends. I was made of sponge holed shoes and make believe sins because I thought just like the pony girls at school, I didn't want to follow anyone, so I tried to wrap my limbs in nonsense and break  fragile bones. I believed that if no one else wanted me, God would leave me alone and I could keep breathing.

He stopped talking to me then.


I was nine and swept under the rug broken ankles told me he was real tired, and just  fell asleep between the double yellow lines. I was made of shattered soap and lost keys and grimy plastic, and I came back and the red truck was there, and I tried to tell him he was silly for sleeping under neath a car. Caution tape was wrapped around his lungs and his ribs were sticky, and when I tried to wake him up, he named himself carrion and now that  I could see his breathing implements, my oxygen started to freeze. I tried to tell him he was wrong, and a liar because big words were more than phonic meanings, and suffocation was too contagious.

He tried to stop living for me then.


I was eleven and gnarled marionette spine had been gone for two years, chopper and smog fringed headlights had swept him again and his mommy says he's visiting his Grammy because he's grounded,  but I don't seem him among the leaves anywhere. I was made of driving wheels spinning out of control and first kisses etched in secrets you aren't supposed to tell even though you're the first to have it, because it was frog lips not a prince's and afterwords my skin was real itchy because his fingertips wouldn't leave my shirt where it was. I used to be stupid being all bad, and painting on the walls, so now I sit on the front porch with ragdoll eyes and try to be real good because maybe then God will get jealous of vodka cheeks and steal me away. All summer I've been waiting for him, but when he doesn't come, sometimes I hate him, although I think that's a sin.

I realised I was going to hell then.