I never got to fall off a tree as a child.

You caught me in the rose bush and the laughing hurt my sore body.

And you told me we could be in the house instead. We’d go through the creaky old door and we’d eat chocolate-covered strawberries. I thought this skinny boy in my t-shirt was an angel.

I watched through the window as I fell off the oak tree, and I thought to myself, wow, that really must have hurt.

My fundamental incompatibility with most people is that


my reality is broken in ways theirs will never be.


Ironically, that’s also true for everyone else on Earth.

That delicate heartbeat on the screen
as your blood is pumped down your bare leg.


The hot red ocean down beneath, behind your eyes.


I mistook it for something else; my tongue is confused and my brain is fuzzy from the Vodka; I thought it was just cranberry.


You are smart and cunning and loud and you’re a good kisser and you’re batshit crazy.

It’s so tempting to keep telling myself the story where you’re both the princess and the dragon and I’m the hero that slays the dragon and gets to keep the princess. But that’s not how real life works. I’ve believed too many fairytales.

“Who are those people?” he asks.

Those are the ghosts of my past selves, bracing for an impact that never comes.

Just like you, now, are recoiling from the rain as I reach out and let the drops pour over my open palm.

I let the tears wash over my sister’s face, so later peonies can bloom pink across her cheeks and a new life can stream through her veins.

I let her grab my stretched out hand and pull me outside, into the humid air; the garden still sparkling with dewdrops.