I am going to write this. I am going to write this, and it is going to be poor, and it is going to be unremarkable, and I am going to be intellectually ashamed of it--but I give no fucks this balmy eve. Not a single one.

----

I leave her, my proud-toothed friend, at her door. The air is something physical outside, something that drags over my shoulders like hot mops. It this walk that tells me something will happen tonight. I can see pieces of them, but I press them down, down, until they are in my feet and I feel each sharp edge against my soles.

My car is a shitbox. The clutch against my feet push those pieces up, but I swallow, I swallow, I gulp air and nothing against them, but these defenses are precisely that: nothing against them.

I think of old smiles, I think of the pitch of her voice at night, I think of my disgust, I think of his, and suddenly they are free--my ugly secrets, the ones I fold so tight I forget the words for them. I have only the feeling of these secrets, and they billow inside me, out of my eyes and ears and mouth. In this wheezing car they push their way out of me, each one as dark and volatile as gunpowder, as a young girl's insecurities.

I know, I tell them, gasping. I know I cannot keep you. I know I cannot put you somewhere dark and pluck up your old peeled pieces for garbage. I know you are no more feeble than the day I hid you there, but you are so shameful, so gross, that I can think of no other home for you. You cannot be a part of the bridge between myself and my friends (him, her, all of them); surely you would burn their feet as they crossed.

They are here:

1. I am lukewarm in every respect.

2. I am wickedly, quietly competitive.

3. I am ashamed of missing you; I am confused by and frustrated with my shame.

4. I am incurably poor at speaking.

5. He holds our spit covered hands over her.

6. I am afraid.

7. My base habits. My lowly, lowly returns to them.

8. I am without talent.

9. I am without drive.

10. We are not wholly right.

There are more. Some will not be bound in coherency, so much have they half-lifed into the bare elements of emotion. Certain words. The failure of our warmth. The too much of it. The not enough.

My secrets lash me hard, but briefly, and then I relax into the humid solidity pouring in my window. I let it coax the wetness on my face into stiff paths. I have reconciled nothing, but my darks, my little hushes can be quiet again.

I know I have--much to do. About these. And I will. For now, though, I have needle and thread to attend to, bags to pack, a mother to mollify. These ambiguous hates and hurts can wait until