Kill me, kill me with your cockatrice glance, but make it a little death. Life is a like a pencil, gotta sharpen it to use it. Whittle away your shyness and write your story on me. You gotta live it 'til you're dead, you gotta rock 'til you see red, you gotta get out of my head, you gotta climb into my bed, you gotta feed me love like bread. You gotta unlock my lament, unleash your fiery serpent. Don't let your love stay pent, you gotta fold me 'til I'm bent, pound 'til we make dents. Now say Amen.

Why can't I stop jumping through hoops, begging for approval from the indifferent? It hurts to think you got close to someone and find out they were using you. It hurts to have your ego stomped on so that others can protect theirs. It hurts to be made to think something's wrong with you, that the sum total of your parts add up to "not as good as X." It hurts to feel like the beautiful parts of you - your open nature, your ability to see the good in others, your warehouse full of love to give - make you stupid.

Not many know true love. The head to toe kind where lightning shoots out all your pores and you are no longer an individual but a phalanx of a Great Holy Love Being, crooked and beckoning your chosen one into the light. Those who do feel this usually sing it solo. The closest most of us get is to find someone who triggers our Mommy or Daddy issues, and we climb in the cage of their lowered expectations just to prove we can break out. And we gnash our teeth and devise our tools of escape and call it courtship.

I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror of the club. There's a splash of lipstick kisses in one corner and someone wrote I <3 DAVE in red melted wax under the soap dispenser. As if I don't feel ridiculous enough being here. It's like I'm peeking through one of those carnival cutouts, plain-pretty head on painted wooden bikini body, trying to be someone I'm not. I reach in my purse and spritz myself with Eastern Glow, store bought exoticism on vanilla white wrist, olfactory invitation to a pity fuck with someone thinking about Asian porn and not me.

I trace my fingers over the inside of your forearm, plant my kisses deliberately. I unbutton your shirt, hungry for more of your skin. You're heartbreakingly self-conscious about it all, bowing your head as if waiting for punishment, your eyes a heady cocktail of desire and fear. You're covered in freckles and I kiss each one. They're why you feel so shy - your brothers and sisters told you they saw ants marching on you as a baby that left dirty footprints you've spent your life trying to wash off. You're old enough to know better, but fears have long claws.

You pump your little legs as fast as you can in your Giranimals shoes, adding your arms, thinking determination will make you faster. You've got your eyes on the prize - the Mr. Sunshine's Cool Treats truck. You stare at that cartoon sun eating an ice cream cone with his sun ray hand as if you can make eye contact with him and plead for him to stop. The other kids didn't tell you the ice cream man was here. You were so excited by the tinny music you didn't tie your shoes and fell on your face in the street.

I find you passed out on the floor, surrounded by crushed beer cans like friends holding up their hands making excuses for you. Neil Young plays on the stereo: "On the day that she left, he died but it did not show..." There's an open notebook in front of you, where you started a poem called "Dreaming In Red." I read the first few lines: "I feel kneed in the head I need you like bread." I feel strange seeing you so emotionally naked when we barely talk. When we don't speak the truth, it leaks out our pores anyhow.

All the old biddies in the hair shop eagerly eat up your fall from grace. You're not a celebrity outside this town, but their trash talk is more tangible than a glossy magazine. They remember you as the star of the cautionary tales they told their daughters. Any taboo they can think of they ascribe to you. I remember you as a friend, a poet, the one who taught me to dance, the one who made me believe in myself. But you hurt me, too. I feel torn between screaming at them and joining them, eating your pain like candy.

When you're standing in your Reeboks under the fluroescent lights, copying this or that ridiculous movement while you calculate calories burned, they always say "remember to breathe" at some point and you laugh it off, like "how ridiculous, you think we'd forget?" But more and more I feel like I do forget basic things like that - controlled breathing, staying present in my skin, eating my vegetables, controlling my thoughts before they spin wildly into paranoid orbit. I feel like my own teenage daughter half the time, eating candy for dinner, ignoring the boring shit that life has no backbone without.

Love's a tricky dance, all right; you wonder if what you see is real or just long-dead reflections like stars in the night. My id scratches anxiously at my Capricorn caution. It gets me so excited, tells me someone's echoed my call, when he just blew into a clever decoy and doesn't care at all. Negotiating all this stuff is so scary, like letting an oversugared kid drive your car, yet magic only happens when the brat takes charge. Contentment won't come 'cuz you can't stop showering offerings on the altar of your id, mistaking him for a moody prophet.

I feel kneed in the head. I need you like bread. Friends say "what more need be said? There's other fish in the sea, Ted." It's true; I swam with one or two, tried to forget you. Put on my Sunday best, it felt like being graded, like a test. A few have touched my skin, hoped something would begin, but none of them got in. I felt less lonely with a glass of gin. Can't stop dreaming in red without you in my bed. I love you, but I'm not enough. It's laughable when I pretend to be tough.

I lost my heart on Ocean Avenue. I was younger then, believed wishes could make things true. A state of mind that set the stage for you. You bought me a beer, then we quickly got drunk. You were more impressed by my small talk then I woulda thunk. You said "let's get some air" and we headed outta there. The ocean stretched imposingly wide, yet it whispered so gently its susurrus lullaby. I still can't smell the ocean without feeling your hands, seeing that silly blanket all covered with sand, feeling ink squiggles of your number on my hand.

"Rust Never Sleeps" era Neil Young is a dead ringer for the guy I fell outrageously in love with long ago. His heart was raw from a relationship ending, mine opaque with ennui. He blasted off the boredom and I still overflow with poetry. It felt like defying gravity, to think he wanted me. He called me a photogenic genius. Then a whore. You can never get that high without crashing from the score. But he left me open hearted, awestruck at how much I could love, like I live in a palace I only inhabit a small part of.

Time after time I give more than I get. I can't trust or relax, I fret and fret. People want to use me, salivating at the pain that stews me. I feel like the terms of relationships involve me holding up a butcher's diagram of myself, negotiating which cut they'd prefer, how many pounds, what they need it for, how many guests they have to serve. Yet how can I feel resentful if I set up the terms? I don't know what people want from me other than be the one who'll feel for them so they don't have to.

I twirl on the porch in my daisy covered sundress. It feels like both regal gown and second skin. I feel like royalty after the formal party's over - majestic yet relaxed. Today, I enjoy being a girl. You've got an open paperback on your lap. You look at me, sipping that peculiar lemonade that looks so innocent yet houses your cousin's homemade moonshine. Makes me wonder what evil thoughts conspire behind your unassuming face. Reason enough to grab your hand and invite you to dance. I breathe in your scent. "The answer to the question is...very yes...very yes..."

We commandeered a stereo and danced to "Push th' Little Daisies" in the department store. The Audio department was near Home Improvement and we danced on the display porch, clinking glasses of fake lemonade and twirling around like "I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen." I miss doing peculiar things for no reason but being young, dumb and full of...come on, quit jerking off to nostalgia. I still feel sixteen going on seventeen, but I'm getting old enough that people look inquisitively between me and a wedding gown. The hourglass sand taps impatient percussion like fingers in a waiting room.

You try to beat folks to the punch, point out your flaws before they get the chance. You joke about your goofy face shape, constant need for assurance, how laughably unorganized you are, your old car. They can't use them as weapons if you not only see them but pick them up and twirl them in the air in your spangly outfit with your fierce precision moves. But maybe you're twirling stuff no one else can see, pulling Don Quixote shit with yourself as the enemy. How ironic that the most painful thing to hear is "hey, you. You're lovely."

You hear him breathe into the phone and memories swirl in a daisy chain as you choose the most flattering lighting to illuminate this piece of your past. There must be some reason he called out of the blue. You're pretty much giddy with excitement, but try to keep it cool. You look down at your night gown and wonder how he'd see you. You were just reading the paperback he left in your apartment, looking for something to do. You weren't dreaming of the fingers that once turned these pages, but now they held a phone connected to you.

Your take on water in a glass ain't bad as gauges go, but don't really stick to your ribs, no? A better test is readiness to purchase prophylactics. The best test is if you can name what you love and speak it out loud. On optimistic lips it draws a map to follow, the coordinates to home. The pessimist will keep it quiet, maybe leak it out in poems, hunching shoulders protectively as they grasp for words in the dark. Otherwise, people could break their dreams one by one like figurines while they look them in the eyes and laugh.

Life feels like a blank page, which on good days feels like opportunity to be seized, like words of love on the tip of your tongue, like looking from the seed envelope picture to the ground, anticipating flowers to come. On bad days it feels empty, endless, papery as a Communion wafer when your heart no longer believes and you feel guilty not so much for not believing but that another person's holy was wasted on you. You feel your page will never fill, will always be blank, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Sitting in White Castle, dead eyed, I think of suicide but it's just a quick thought, like a black cat darting through the parking lot and disappearing in the alley. I feel like I'm failing in a world where the only way to fit in is advertising what candy you'll yield when they crack your pinata spine. Maybe there's nothing wrong with me that can't be fixed with wine. Maybe isolation feeds the demons trying to trip me, tie me, herb rub my skin, pop an apple in my craw, roast me over a fire, exciting drool down their jaws.

Santa, what I want for Christmas can't be wrapped in fancy paper and shiny ribbon wire. I want to be free from desire, from disappointments to drown with liquid fire. So why ask you for this, a made up dude played by homeless guys at the mall? Well, you're everywhere these days, I'd feel heartless not going through the motions like one and all. I know I won't get what I really want, so I'll trick myself into thinking that was the plan all along. I just want someone to love without compromise, without telling myself lies.

The song makes you think of a time when you were too young to be aware of the concept of passing fads. You just thought: This is life. Tab in pink cans, astrological paperbacks, longing to be one of the girls with long, shiny Susan Dey hair and serious gazes and pamphlets about banning the nukes, tramping through autumn leaves taunting preppies. "Coffee, Tea or Me" on your sister's book shelf, reading about sex in her Mademoiselle magazines. Sitting in her empty room, a shaggy charmer sings "baby, we were born to run" as you fiddle with the carpet fibers.

1. Stop bending over backwards for the approval of people who can't or won't give a damn. If I started my own religion, I might call this one of the Load-Bearing Principles...something dripping with gravitas that would snap the ears to attention like a bolt of lightning. For this is one of those things that will make everything else fall into place once mastered.

2. Use and respect my time more wisely. Spend more time doing things to benefit me, less time seeking approval.

3. Be honest in all relationships. I am for the most part...but my failings are tearing me apart.

You unfold her letter. It says:

"I can't help but feel like your interest in me has dropped precipitously since our afternoon under the shady tree, lending credence to my theory that you just used me."

Such crisp words she used! Mannered and precise as a starched suit. The girl you knew wore soft things, sundresses and flip flops, things that could be easily removed, her doubts brushed away like dandelion fluff in a haze of sweet nothings and summer breezes. But it's January now. You can't deny she speaks the truth, so you criticize what it comes dressed in.

I think I can have sex without love, that it can still feel good. I think I can...I think I can...call me The Little Whore Who Could.

There must at least be caring, or it's just some lifeless meat dance, depressing as uncooked ramen noodles. Part of me wishes I could turn my emotions off and envies people who can. Maybe if I had just so damn many lovers at a time, there'd always be another body to fill the hole where the loneliness goes. My ego would skip across flesh like pebbles on pond surface. Then sink.

You're cut off like a gangrenous limb. Years from now I'll pass you by and people won't ask "did you know him?" No ripple of recognition will shine in my eyes; not for the one who bathed me in lies. I practice in the mirror how I'll look at you then, hardening my heart, reminding myself it's a rare gem. Try to forget how you made it shine, how you inspired poems with words like "thee" and "thine." My love for you was an ocean I was learning to swim when you made it clear I was a disposable whim.

My brain blisters thinking of you. Count them all, throw 'em in a sack to take out when you're feeling blue. They'll clink like coins, like glasses we raise high to toast the sky. Knit them, make a mitten for your hand, spread them on the floor to step in like sand. Grin ear to ear to beat the band as your neighbors wonder at this fella in crazy cuckoo land. Never settle for the bland, but don't go off the deep end like Ray Milland. Blow out your candles way out there, weave your sulphur wishes into your hair.

We're alone, you and I, but not together. We're both alone in our hearts, perhaps ever shall be. We wander the vagrant touchstones of the same city seeking out fellowship in scraps like stray cats.

We both pretend we're content, in different ways. We tried to share space but you got spooked at being recognized, unnerved that someone saw the hole inside. I smelled the burning of the nerve endings you carefully cauterized, know you covered the bald patch with astro turf, called it Kentucky bluegrass, covering your ass. You don't like having your bluff called, prefer to stay walled.

You go down like a Paxil ice cream cone, make me a puddle when we talk on the phone. It just ain't fair to guess your face in the air, with all this love to share. Get your ass on a plane to O'Hare. You drive me mad, long distance lad; let's not wonder what we coulda had. Let's not say we never tried. Sit by my side, I'll get your tongue untied, we'll unlock our secrets through shared exhales. It's all I can think of reading your e-mails, as imagination makes do with the scratch of my own nails.

You're so greedy you'd grab grub from a grebe. You're so cynical you'd suck cyanide from a rhino's side to give your smile a place to hide. You're so shifty you shed shoes to hush your steps. You're so cantankerous you spank us then thank us, when all we wanna do is bank, Gus. You're so horny you bid tree branches to melon ball you like Pap smear phalanges. You're so confused you can't find Candyland with a map you wrote on your hand. You're so hopeful you offer love like mints to people who pick you off like lint.