Everything spills through the window. We are walking through the empty neighborhood where my childhood home is, and I know this is a dream because you touch my hand and neither of us is scared. My mother has left needles and buttons on the lawn. One of her ghosts permanently lives on the front steps. In the distance, my father is shouting. You and I do not speak. Please, don’t address the hurt. Don’t look at the ways in which I destroy my flesh, how I tweeze blood. It is raining while we walk from one set to the next. Beyond the house is a wooden stage, with a different house, and a different mother. No matter what, I am suffocating. I need you like a knife through my palm. Instead of a sky we have a ceiling filled with fake flowers, translucent beach balls, and storm lamps. My fear is loud; don’t wake me up. There are no words I will be able to use in response to your leaving. A few that come to mind are swallow, wound, speak, die. As in, what’s better, swallowing words or swallowtails. Wounds or stones. Speaking or turning off the lamp. The pit or the untouched earth. I’m not sure how to do this anymore. If you go, I go. Let’s have staircases instead of trees. Let’s figure out if this is worth it. You hold the door open for me and we enter a rotten house. Are you okay? Even those who have left hang between these lines, their life energy like webs, everyone laughing at the altar.

Lose track of communication. Lose days, buttons, blood, memories. House as blue pit, lagoon-sticky, once occupied by ants, moths, and maggots, now occupied by mice. Leave nightly to free yourself from mother. When you pick him up, he’s at the end of the street in a checkered sweatshirt. Icy streets. Whip your mother’s car three towns over. No crash. No death. The woman who takes your money thinks you’re funny. How many couples does she meet. Inside, yellow pillows, low light, he peels back the lampshade until the bulb is exposed. A bulb is a milk tooth. You wonder how things would go with someone else. Would he be gentler. Reality is spread sheets and tight clothing. He grabs your thigh; you are iron. Everything is scalding, later there will be red. When you tell your therapist about the pain she is horrified. She recommends you to a pelvic-floor trauma specialist. You tell her how he paused halfway through to ask if you were in pain; you lied. After, he asked if you were gay. Start a list, revisiting every sexual experience; try to sniff out one who didn’t coerce, bruise, draw blood, cause pain, use metal; you are left a starving bloodhound. Four out of eighty-six. He is short when you drop him off. Return alone to the half-mold house. Sleep in the childhood bed where you were raped. Everyone wishes you a happy holiday and asks if your family is behaving, but really, they want to know if you are forming scars. One hot night, you wake to fetch a cup of water. Your bedroom has old glow-in-the-dark stars and your exes’ names written on the dresser, including his. A man who ate your youth. In the living room, your mother has left the Christmas tree on and nothing else. The light is bruise-hued, the outskirts of the room coated in faux-pine nettles, glitter, fruit ornaments. The scene looks safe. You feel as though you’re breathing through cloth. The room hums as if there’s never been violence. In another life, the walls don’t know your blood. The wind howls outside but never licks your back. Daughter, you are safe. Go back to bed.