she is too hopeful, her heart is a swollen muscle of

adoration, gushing with adrenaline, threatening to

burst into a wet explosion of light and

neon colors and cherry-red blood that really

tastes like pennies and salt.

[you will be so terribly hard to get over.]

he makes her feel like

she is dying of a fluttery heart attack and suffocating

from all the fantasies swimming in her in her

medicated mind. he makes her want to change,

crawl from her cocoon of self-consciousness and

painful shyness and become the butterfly she's never

been.

[i want to make myself beautiful for you,

and i am willing to take the risk.]

this boy, oh this boy, is something wonderful and

glorious and completely and utterly amazing, with

frosted-glass flesh and auburn hair that is just the right

shade of adorable. she is something less than what is

needed, something with suffocated bones and a

heart damaged from her bittersweet love affair

with anorexia.

[we're on speaking terms now, ana and i, she promises to make you love me, so i…i succumb.]

she has stripes from where a shaving

razor has raped her soft skin, and he has freckles from

where the sun has kissed his own shooting star flesh.

[god, you're so luminous.]

his hands are boney, but they felt so so so right as

they briefly brushed her arm.

[nobody can make me shiver like you do.]

he is

contagious.

[you smile, i smile. you laugh, i laugh. you look away, i shatter into a million pieces at your feet.]