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nobody will love you if you chew your hair,

my aunt told me on days when my underwear was too itchy for me to go to school.

but she told me lots of things that i didn�t believe,

that rats would chew off my ring finger if i didn�t drink my milk,

that men liked girls who were strong and could walk tall among a crowd, even if their thighs were stout and hips were sore from bearing children. that men liked women who pretended to be strong, even if they secretly threw nickels into the fountains at the mall wishing for shinier hair and the perfect orgasm: the kind that would rise up in your throat and tingle your toes.

hookers on the side of the street clinked their junk jewelry against our car window.

my father kept his eyes steady, focused on the path to the base and the chain-link fence that kept out the world,

i eyed a woman with blue mascara in a shaky circle around her eyes. it didn�t seem like make-up but more like a warning sign. that she had circled her eyes purposely, so you would not look away from them. like she was finding a way to become visible again. then i peered down at her high heels, the scratched hot pink plastic, and the rest of her seemed to fade away. just a pair of cheap, plastic pumps moving around on the smoldered gravel. just a pair of cheap, plastic pumps the color of construction paper hearts and as unsteady as dress-up shoes.

i hummed quietly under my breath thinking of something to say, a way to make things meaningful,

because every time i fall into a pattern of like, sinking into the softness of someone�s company, i think that i have fallen in love. i start looking for signs, like lottery numbers representing birth dates, like crushes really being obsessions, and that gazes are nothing but gazes, and girlfriends are representational of mistrust,

but i know that�s not true now,

i�m afraid that he will love his causes more than me

i�m afraid that i will cease to exist, swallowed up by the we that has converged from who we were as individuals,

i�m afraid of relationships.

of messy bedcovers, of icy toes and skin against my own,

of kisses where it is hard to find where he stops and i begin

and so i turn away,

heading for my chain link face and the base to keep the world away,

i have drawn warning signs around my eyes in indigo

people don�t turn away or fall in,

and though i walk unsteady, piecing together my heart carefully with extra paste, i walk in large crowds,

and i stand tall,

but do not dare look and see if he has followed me,

i cannot risk going back,

i cannot risk being less of than i am,

for a shiny ring,

and wet kisses that eventually dry.