Listen:I want you to like me.

There is dignity to my person.

My soul, in fact, has capabilities that even I am not aware of. My mother says I had a fiery, and she will go so far as to even say dynamic, personality. In her bathrobe at three in the afternoon, lazy Sunday, spoken in quiet semi-transparent tongues, she relates to me how, as she sighs and drags on her cigarette slowly, even in the womb she remembers how with such complacent and simultaneously determined force I would thrust my small partially formed fist into her abdomen.

Remembering every kiss I've long since lost is painful, but I certainly have references who will vouch, diagram even, my illustrious past, my uncertain but promising future, undying compassion for all things small and soft and vulnerable, ability to wax philosophically and simultaneously fuck, on key mind you, singing, screaming that jazz rift that, Simon says still leaves him, left him, shaking at dawn. Incredible. My doctors say my emotional instabilities, tendencies towards self destruction are not only just within the realm of normalcy, but symbolically convey the alienation and promise of the 21st century prototype.

I am your favorite love song.

In some circles, my quirkiness is seen as endearing and even possibly admirable.

Please tell me you also are still swallowing your juvenile delinquencies. It's been years. I've never let them go. Still running, screaming. So. So quiet. Mom said I always liked to play alone. Something I always felt, and then had to learn a second time. Invest in life support systems and friends who won't abandon you even though you will. You were raised to be so. So. We swim in blood and sand and maybe we need these drinks to wash away the wounds that emerge with every newly stolen ... I can be hopeful in moments of sunlight, maybe spent with you.

I like your fingers.

Jeans.

I believe in music. I dream in water. I endorse fucking. Matthew said I tasted like summer when he kissed me. Would you like to try? I'm trying to remember the time I last felt I had a pulse, and maybe it was behind the gas station in July when Violet held my hand and cried into my wrists, shaken, startled, breathing her misery with pride, because at least it was her own, and I miss her, him, him, him, me? We were all so ... I need. So? Said life needs ... punctuation? Never. Ever. Stop. Just hold my head back and body close, and with eyelids turned, breathe soft inconsequential lies against my skin, because I need to hear them all again.