etcetera, etcetera

christmas. telephone. pipe bomb.  you learned to play with nonsense words instead of the sharp reality of pain when you were five years old: spinning icicle, bubble gum,  and puppy dog through the fires glowing in your head. ribbons of vocabulary at a bonfire dance. one hollow needle in a plural space, and the words  marching band and inquiry  explode behind tiny eyelids. the days pass in scalpels, feeding tubes, and books carefully selected from the pediatrics ward library. you are a grown up now; something you never imagined would happen. you've somehow made it here with more and less words than you've ever had. a scarred vein ripping turns ' agony ' from a sharp gasp to ' bonfire, gargantuan, loquacious .' someone in the room is screaming. it might be you. the suction tube snakes writhe down your throat, putting your little game to the test. RedLightCOOKING chickensBOOKS, WORDSBOOKS.  three pages into the mental thesaurus and your throat is inflamed....

"i'm falling through the doors of the emergency room, can anybody help me with these exit wounds? i don't know how much more love this heart can lose, and i'm dying, dying from these exit wounds." once, in a world that no longer exists, i got on an airplane with this song dancing on the tip of my tongue. to my right sat nanny, anxious as always, clutching her carry on like the crown jewels. i stared out the window beside her, trying to commit the city of philadelphia to memory as it melted into pooling darkness. it occurred to me that one day i might want to remember what it looked like to be leaving this country, the lights of a city i've never seen fading over a darkened ocean.  young & sixteen, i had no way of knowing how true that would one day be; no way of knowing that the notre dame had just seven years left to remember it's past, before the same fire burning in the heart of a young traveler would ignite some of the oldest beauty left standing...

when i was in first grade, you came to florida on vacation.  chris and danielle sat in front of a glowing television as you sat on my parents' sofa, donna bustling in the kitchen with my mother. it was just two short years after my health problems began slowly emerging, and i remember feeling the dread of being sun sick and nauseous; too anxious to tell my mom, lest another trip to the hospital befall me at a time like this. i made it through the restaurant hours prior; brushing the itch out of my clothes after chris poured sand down the back of my dress.  i was never interesting for the right reasons. but i can't miss it. i won't miss it. i can't let it get so bad that i miss it.  in the glow of our living room, i feel closer than ever to being interesting enough. i've worked hard to take up this space. (my mom's voice, whispering: "one day, when you're older, they'll be glad to be your friend. kids aren't always kind. it's okay. i...