Aliyah Knight

you inside me

It’s 4pm on a Thursday and you’re thinking about a girl melting into you on the bus ride home. You’re thinking about tearing her apart, and you’re thinking that you’re awful for wanting to tear her apart, but you want to see all the good things inside of her, all the deep oozing reds. It’s 4pm on a Thursday and you can feel yourself rotting and you like it. You dig inside of yourself and there’s acid on your fingers and you like it, burning holes into your fingers and you like it, sewing her ribs into your fingers and you like it – but it’s not enough.

You like her but it’s not enough; not enough until she’s six feet inside of you. Where do you go from here?

It’s 4pm on a Thursday and you’re thinking about all those things you did wrong when you were seven years old, how if you’d been different then you might’ve saved the you that’s wasting away now. And even though it’s fruitless you claw at the ginormous steel door of time; you beg to be sent back, you beg to be born empty and hollow and carved into a thing that doesn’t feel as much as you, you beg until you’re greyer than grey.

It’s 4pm on a Thursday, and what is time if not holding you in shackles? You are so tired of this world, exhausted of this body, wanting to wash yourself out in the waves of other people, better people. You’re thinking about the years that you’ve wasted on an aching brain, wondering whether it’d look better soaked in glitter and held captive in a snow globe in the house of someone prettier.

Someone somewhere sometime and you’re high and she’s high and they’re high. Where is your father now? There is a boy in this room who wants his hands on you. You don’t want to feel him, but you want to feel them feeling him feeling you. There is a boy in this room who wants his hands on you; you and six vodka shots are pressed into the sink in the bathroom. You and six vodka shots lift your shirt up high enough to have your heart fingered with all the might to tear it apart. Her fingers would be softer in ruining you.

Don’t think about your blood like sizzling butter on the heat of her tongue. Don’t think about her sat inside of you, digging for missing parts. You pour lemonade down your throat – enough for two. But she’s still hungry, and she’s greedy, and you frown because she’s too greedy and you’re too empty. So, you tell her to build a new god out of you. She laughs; she can’t! ‘You’re not enough’.

It’s four pm on a Thursday and there are two girls sat together near the front of the bus. They are the only vaguely real matter in here; you’re the empty spaces that suffocate them. The wheels spin until they come undone, and you are squeezing the life out of the girls as if they were toothpaste, their bodies washing pavements washing people. Somebody across the road sees the terror in your eyes and laughs; we’ll imagine that he is much better than you, that he would never make those mistakes like you. There is a loud bang and a screeching noise, and you wake up. It’s 4pm–

It’s 4pm on a Thursday. Isn’t it always 4pm on a Thursday? You want to break this chain; you want to rub off your use-by date. Imagine it like this: you are the sun rising and setting, the moon bleeding to red, the waves crushing the shore. Bigger than the universe, smaller than the hole they burnt into your heart when they left you. There is a man sat across from you in the café: he is licking his lips and wishing that they were yours. You empty your stomach into the toilet bowl. You must do more; you must do better. Do-over. Restart. There is somebody sicker than you in the waiting room, and you rejoice in that. The lovely receptionist warns you that if there are too many holes when they unroll you, they might have to throw you away instead of fixing you, and he asks you whether you are okay with that. ‘Of course,’ you say, smiling so hard that you add two rips at the corners of your mouth to what’s wrong with you. ‘What a ridiculous question to ask.’

Stop. Rewind. Restart. There’s no doing better, there’s no being better. A man and a boy and a girl are laughing at you from inside tortoise shells. You don’t know why the tortoise shells; you wonder why the tortoise shells. Can you hear the music leaking from the walls? There must be a problem with the pipes, you think. That makes sense, you think. Never knowing what to know, you hide inside a crossword clue. There’s an echo crawling up your back and trying to untie you; the schoolchildren are trying on their big voices and trying to dress up in you.

It’s 4pm on a Thursday; it’s been too long; it’s been too much; you must say sorry. Sorry. Not enough. Never enough, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry– the line cuts off, the eagle barks, the chasm opens, the caterpillar is so much better than you, and– It’s four pm on a Thursday and you’re tired from the ride. In her arms and on her hips, you pour yourself into the wet of her lips; you are born again from the mold of her. You’re the sun rising and reaching out and you’re the leaves that you can never kiss. You’re a girl tucked away inside her brain; you’re the walls that trap her in. Nineteen years pass in vain, and you never wash the kitchen sink. You’re the doorstep of the girl you love, you just can’t let her in.