I get lost in what I didn’t do, what I didn’t say.

Like, hi, how are you, can I be your forever friend?

Girls learn early not to over-romanticize. Especially girls who look like me.

Class and beauty norms and then there I was, making poetry

out of every goddam word and

he was right. Nothing Happened.

(But I wanted it to.)

Nothing happened, except in the parentheses, the margins.

Nothing happened, and I only told everyone else I loved him.

I think he must have been horrified.

I think someone must have told him and he must have been horrified.

I think I am a monster and what I call love is only snakes that

turn men to stone.

I think I am Medusa.

The horrible secret I have been hiding from him is that secret.

I am sick, my body is broken and I have made a disaster

out of my life, but.

I loved him.

I thought the best gift I could give him was a life without me in it.

Even better: me in his head, a pretty blonde girl in his bed.

Isn’t that the dream?

I thought.

As a journal entry prompt, I am writing my own obituary.

Tell him I loved him the best I knew how.

Won’t you? Please?