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Skinny Love

March 15^th. I stare at the clock on his wall. The minute hand licks after the numbers lazily. This is the longest moment in history. I wriggle out from beneath him, furtively making my way to his fridge and like a mouse, I begin to scour through the items hungrily. Butter. Ketchup. Half a head of lettuce sprouting a film of mold. Piss-colored milk. The only thing that looks safe enough to consume is that bottle of water in the back; it was never opened. This should placate the stomach rumblings that have kept me awake for the past hour and a half. It really is my responsibility to do something about it anyway. God forbid I should wake him up before noon. I sit outside of his dorm room where I finally feel that it’s safe to cry. The tears have been threatening at my lashes for days now. I’ve tried to hold it in. I tried to swallow the raw, aching lump in the back of my throat, but here the tears are. Soaking the sleeves of his hoodie.

March 17^th. I’m a wrecked individual, he says. A broken little girl with daddy issues and bad boys for crushes. He says I can leave any time I want. I don’t have to be tangled in this ugly relationship forever. He reminds me daily that I can runaway if I really wanted to.

“But this much I know, baby: you don’t really want to leave. You’re nobody out there without me. Just remember that. Fit it through your thick fucking skull. Little Mackenzie Burst. Act like you’re such a saint. So innocent.”

He says that I allow myself to get trampled by beautiful boys like him—monsters with hideous habits. They have filthy hands and nasty thoughts, lead dirty lives and look for babies like me that are malleable and ripe. The kind of helpless creatures who subconsciously pine after batshit crazy yahoos like him.

March 18^th. It’s like trying to sit still on the shore at the beach and not get pummeled back down helplessly into the sand by the waves. At first it’s kind of funny. You sputter and tumble and gag on mouthfuls of water. But after several attempts it can get pretty frustrating—a task you’re determined to accomplish. Once. Twice. Three times. And by the hundredth time there’s no way in hell you’re about to stop at this point because, “Damn it, I’ve tried this many times already. I’m bound to get it soon. Even if it’s just ONCE.” Then there’s the other whinnying little cry inside of you, and it pleads, “Give the fuck up.” It isn’t a struggle anymore if you’re not even trying. The ocean’s laughing and the waves will just keep on coming. You’ll keep getting wet, knocked back, and swallowed into the earth again. Make sure that when you’re tackled and lying there, trembling, naked as a newborn, try to be as still as you possibly can. Feel him spilling inside of you while you disintegrate into ash. Allow yourself to crumble. Watch closely as you become eroded by the violent to and fro of a raging sea that bursts from inside of him. This is our sex life.

March 21^st. I’d kill for a couple of spicy wings right now, but I need to stay thin. Not fit, or healthy, but fragile. He needs me hopeless and writhing in his sheets like an ant under a glaring shard of glass, sizzling beneath a scorching pinhole of light.

March 22^nd. I am the epitome of submissive passivity. Bloody. Torn. Squirming and fighting against something horrible and tenebrous. Damp with sweat, I sigh, my own breath echoing back at me like
dissipated revenants. I’m frail and thin, just the way he’s always imagined me. He likes me this way: barely brushed by life, my skin dangling onto my bones. I inhale billows of thick venom
and I cough up something black. And so there he is, watching over me vigilantly with beady, umber eyes. He’s got that filthy smile playing at the corner of his lips. He’s disgusting. Then suddenly I realize there’s a scary semblance between him and me. Not quite like looking into a mirror, but close to it. I glance again at the wall clock. Hang in there. It’s almost over.

March 23^rd. I love him for the spoiled saffron and forget-me-nots he leaves on me. I love him for the tangy, red stains and four-knuckled kisses he leaves singed upon my cheek. I love him for the hateful, bitter words he spits at me. I love him for the blows and blisters that leave my delicate skin in patches of a deep, eggplant hue—maroon and sun-kissed. I hate him for every beautiful name he calls me, because I know he’s being a phony bastard. I trust him a little more when he’s possessed by Jim Beam and showers me with insults. The liquid courage is all the proof I’ll ever need. It’s how he really feels. It’s the only time I feel he’s being truly genuine.

April 5^th. Once upon a summer, we joined the sprinklers and sizzling of our neighbor’s barbeque in a chorus of laughter. In the broken light, he was almost beautiful, careful with his words and eager with a sweat dripping between his brows. We lay sprawled, enveloped in shadows. I sang on a warm night, melting from between my legs. We groaned with the sway of the hammock and hummed with the cicadas. Our sighs dripped with honey from the beehives in the backyard. Summer never left us lonely.

I’m a vegetable now. He’s picking at a scab on my shoulder and suckling at the blood that seeps from it.

April 6^th. He stands beside my James Dean poster. Purses his lips. Squints. Pulls a cigarette out from his back pocket. Tousles his dirty blonde hair. Rolls the sleeves of his t-shirt over his shoulders, then finally strikes a pose. He speaks with the cigarette pinched between the corners of his lips while a slimy grin spreads across his stupid face.

“I kinda look like him, don’t cha think?”

“Sexy. Just like him,” I say. I’m tempted to kick his teeth in.

April 16^th. He reaches into my back pocket; slipping in a heavy, silver coin.

“It’s Canadian money… Cool, huh?” I can hear a smile in his voice, his hot breath in my ear. I shudder inwardly as I fish out the coin and turn it over with little interest. I studiously keep my face and eyes averted from him as I safely tuck the coin away again.

I give him a simple nod and reply curtly, “Sure.”

“You don’t like it?” he hisses.

“You know I do. Thanks.” I’ve actually got about a million of these same exact coins floating around in my purse from last summer. I swallow hard, and I try to smile up at him. But the action doesn’t feel quite right. My cheeks ache and my throat is dry.

“I brought you your favorite pizza: Hawaiian. And a Coke.” He hands me the greasy bag and holds up an ice-cold Coca-Cola as his lips curl into a snarky grin. This is my reward for being such a good girl. Teasingly, he twirls the glass bottle close to my face as if beckoning a child from the playground with a filthy handful of jolly ranchers and M&M’s.

“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?” I almost hear him growl, “…let’s find out.”

“That is my favorite.” It is. How did he guess? He knows everything. That was my first lesson ever. If I tried to be in anyway surreptitious about my business, he would find out. Ever since then I know to always expect or act as if I’m being watched.

“I know,” he sighs, as-a-matter-of-factly.

He snakes two long arms around my waist and pulls me in close to him. I grimace and realize there isn’t much between us to liberate me from the hardness in his jeans probing into my back.

He pushes the door open and walks me into his room. The air is thick with vestiges of marijuana lingering in his room. I almost choke. There’s something else that stinks. It’s balmy in here, stuffy with the kind of gut-wrenching stench of teenage sweat and dirty clothes. The sheets are creased, sticking together in a knotty mess. His stereo had band name stickers plastered all over it and the pores of the surround sound bled a cacophony of dissonant chords and a string of profanities. I look all around me and notice the pale walls and trash. Empty beer cans, used condoms, pizza boxes, cigarette butts inside of a kitchen bowl as an ashtray. Oh, and a collection of his most recently purchased porn magazines. These were the only items in his room that were neatly stacked. For whatever reason, I felt like an inmate at Sing-Sing—it was just a vibe.

“Hey, why are you acting so bashful?” He pushes a few strands of my hair behind my ear. I coil away and shrug from beneath his heavy hand.

My stomach churns and suddenly the smell coming from the greasy bag that made the walls of my stomach tremor and yawn with hunger less than a minute ago is now making me sick.

April 17^th. He pops Lorazepam like skittles. The bottles glisten on his dresser like candy corn, labeled orange and white, prescribed by his doctor. He tells me that his doctor whispers to the other employees, “Yeah, that Nick Lunetta kid. The one with the Jeffrey Dahmer lookin’ eyes. He’s a psychopath.” I don’t know whom to believe.

April 24^th. “Don’t fuck with me,” he hisses close to my face. His hand is tightly wrapped around my throat. He curdles away in the shadowy corners of his residence hall and leaves me caged in his room. I can sometimes hear his snickering ricocheting off of the walls and into other rooms. They slip through the cracks of the walls and through slivers beneath the doors. His voice whispers along the corridors and screeches out an uncanny variation of Bohemian Rhapsody. This haunting melody dances with the silhouette of his bony figure, twisting and leaping like Jack Skellington, only less charming. He sings and aimlessly roams the halls, drunkenly staggers about campus, climbs the trees behind the library and sits perched on it’s steps like a gargoyle—pay little mind to him and maybe he’ll leave you alone. He might snarl harassments at you while your face is turned. Keep walking. Do not acknowledge it.

April 25^th. I sigh his name. It sounds like death and rolls off of my tongue. Like yawning, my mouth releases a hollow echo. I feel like I can see the ice in my breath float upward then fall silently like little ghosts jumping off of cliffs. Once his nightmares have slipped through the open slivers of that lock, everyone becomes subservient to them—victims I should say. He becomes your worst nightmare. No need to check underneath your bed skirt for a glowing pair of yellow eyes. There’s nothing hairy of the sort in your closet. No, the boogeyman is right here on campus. He doesn’t hide or wait till sundown. He stalks around like the slender man, lurking about and waiting. Weaving in and out of the traffic of bodies, towering triumphantly over a sea of heads. Remember: we are all the pieces to his chessboard. He decides who stays and who crumbles.

April 27^th. In the wake of my nightmare he appears before me and towers over my bed, soothing me with shaky, pale hands. They’re warm and melt away any vestige of discomfort or uncertainty. Like Superman, he whisks me off into the darkness of the kitchen. Half of the floor is bathed in the moonlight; this light was eerie, disconcerting. It was his voice somewhere in the distance that mollified the sinister whispers that followed me out of my sleep. The churn in my stomach vanishes as I bury my face into his chest. The stubble on his chin feels painfully familiar, like grains of sand through my fingers, grazing against my cheek. I’m comfortable in his grip until he’s crushing me.

May 1^st. I tell him once, "No." I’m refusing. I’m actually fighting back against his will. But he insists. Forcefully, he rams his hand into my panties, his fingers exploring wildly. I clamp my thighs together tightly. He doesn't like that I'm tense. He wants me to be Raggedy Ann. I close my eyes and instantly I’m someplace else. Some place pretty, where someone wants me, loves me. I could feel his hands trying to pry my legs open, bruising my inner thighs. He bends me over. I murmur softly, "Not here. Please, no." He smiles and shoves several fingers inside of me. I'm still shivering, still crying. He whispers that he wants me.

May 8^th. He’s history. Like the dull, blurry words in my history textbook. History. History. Like yesterday was, and the day before that, and even last week. He’s history. Like this morning’s meal. History, like the bottle of gin I downed last night, my head swimming in a not so sober state. History, like old, crumpled love notes that once belonged to my best friend and me. History, like soles of a worn out sneakers, like stale potato chips, like the dirt under my nails. He’s history like what you thought was a very close friend in high school. History, like an argument, make up sex, hand-me-down clothes, and sucky Christmas presents. His story. My story. No matter whose story, really. Because it’s all history.