You come in the front door.

Your coat already shaken off. 

Do you think I’ll find a hint of what day it is on you?

You smile, so happy to see me. 

I can smell them. 

I can smell the cold coming off of you. 

Have you ever wanted to walk into someone else’s kitchen and start throwing things?

That’s what I think about doing everyday. 

Nothing here feels like mine anymore. 

Not the dishes, not the bed, not the floor, not you. 

I would stand upon your entrance.

Feel more like a lamp these days than your sweet lamb.

What have you done to my body?

When was the last time you thought about it?

You only wanted to reattach my fingers since I needed yours. 

Your hands, the palms of your hands as if my mouth were a napkin. 

You trusted me enough to admit this desire of shame. 

So, I let you.

I had watched you drag your way through school day after day for years. 

I almost thought you’d leave me. 

I wish you would’ve left me. 

But a small dismemberment put a smile on your face I hadn’t seen since we were kids. 

Before grad school, before you started shutting down on me without warning. 

Living with a ghost isn’t how I’d describe it but I have no other way. 

No want of purpose, just drive. 

All hours of the night hearing cups scrape across the table. 

Books moving. 

Footsteps back and forth, wondering if you’d come for me tonight. 

Waking up alone, reminding myself you can feel the dead but they are composed of surprises. 

One being they feel nothing, retain nothing, no matter the care you take of them. 

I couldn’t say no to you. 

I missed you bolting to me. 

I missed you excited. 

I missed your happiness. 

My god, I missed you talking.

I did everything to keep you with us. 

Keep you alive. 

The laughter swelling inside every room when you’d talk about a prep item or a tool you needed to bring home. 

Things you stole for me. 

It was all for me.

Your selfless love. 

The day we finally decided you’d switch my thumbs, that was the last good memory I have with you. 

You wanted me to be awake for it. 

A light anesthesia so I would still be with you. 

I always wondered what it would look like to have my bones cut into but nothing prepared me for the reality of how much you’d kissed me that day. 

How many places your mouth never touched before.

Your tongue licking the knuckles from under my skin.

We’d belong to each other always, I thought. 

We were bonded, we had shown gestures of love others couldn’t understand. 

You kept going. 

I stared at you on your knees imagining I was royalty and you were the kingdom’s embarrassment at my feet kissing my ankles with your marker.

Mapping out my body to my knees. 

My wrists strapped as you set sail for my elbows. 

You fed me a cocktail of drugs for months. 

My only memories being blood and your smile. 

I had grown a fear of your teeth showing. 

You didn’t even ask for permission. 

It was my food or my water. 

And I’d wake up begging you to tell me what you’re leaving inside my body. 

Little things, you’d assure me. 

Clean sheets, clean clothes. 

You’d tap a gerbil feeder adhered to the wall and tell me to keep hydrated and leave. 

The bed more of a crib than a cage but I couldn’t get out. 

You’d come home someone else.

Calling me your little grub, your pretty maggot. 

Your happiness relied on my suffering. 

Nothing changed. 

You were still far away even when we were nose to nose.

Huffing against me like the big bad wolf. 

In the 1962 film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, Joan Crawford is a once famous actress now recluse who ends up in a wheelchair. Bette Davis is her envious alcoholic caretaker failed child-star sister who is stealing her money for liquor and locking her in the room, not feeding her, not letting her see anyone, mocking her, tormenting her. Crawford in one scene yells “you wouldn’t be able to do these awful things if I weren’t in this chair” or something along those lines. Davis screams back, “but you are! You are in that chair!”

I never imagined in all the Joan Crawford films I’ve seen that this would be the film my life closest resembled. 

Look at me. 

I’m screaming it in my head. 

Look at me. 

You won’t. 

I could speak but I don’t want to remind you there’s more you can take from me when you get like this. 

I don’t know where you put my feet but I’m afraid the person you’ve been with is walking on them.  

I know you butchered and froze the meat from my legs.

I know this because we’ve been eating them and still my biggest fear is you’re ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza saying “wow, the tree is so big” watching the lighting like we used to with all the other dopes who think they’re in love because there’s a million lights and sounds causing unnoticed seizures they’ve mistaken for joy. 

I miss dancing with you. 

I miss the you before they gave you a degree. 

I miss wrapping my arms around you. 

Where are those?

Now I only feel yours wrapping me up. 

Swaddling me like a baby. 

Brushing my hair resentfully but you were the one who said you wanted my hands in marriage. 

You wanted this.

I wanted children in the yard to call in for dinner. 

Tonight you set me in the basement because you had company over.

I heard them, you know?

I heard you laughing when glass broke. 

I heard you dancing. 

I heard you begging for their soles. 

My soles. I knew it. 

I wanted white lights down here. 

I specifically said I wanted the white lights.

They make me feel better.

You left me here, a jellybean of flesh. 

Can’t even turn them off. 

Maybe if I spit into the socket it’ll cause an electrical fire and you’ll leave me to burn up and I won’t have to look at these godforsaken colorful lightbulbs flickering making me feel like something awful is going to crawl out from under the stairs, take one look at me, and devour me as a kindness.

God, I would do anything for someone to want all of me. 

I hear their body hit the floor. 

You scurrying. 

Table scraping across the room. 

Will I have a friend?

Will you let me watch?

This is the first time I’ve been excited since the last time you fed me from your hands when I still had my own. 

You open the basement door. 

Say my name, please.