—
For seven weeks, one by one, she cut her wrists into kites and string.
They decorated her remains with escape clauses and expiration dates, a row of arrows through the skin.
They asked for a warm body to replace a need elsewhere, a marker of muscle and a moistened gauze.
She gave me a reason. Leaves were parted to let the veins in.
—
I waited for her in a short cornered room, in between cabinets, crouching, listening. I was little more than a torso, with or without legs. At most an extra arm, shoulders and a patch of hair.
I caught them staring at a capillary and calling it a certain ripple, I saw a still life disappearing on the inner corner of each hand.
—
Six hours of slash and burn, six clinics, one back canopy, no one said your name. Jillison, not even once.
They put her on a saline drip and said she was starting to improve, stopped vomitting, started drinking water and milk. She showed a normal spinal curve for once.
Her waiting room was windowless, walls nearly invisible, as close as we could come to a non-zero recovery again.
They never say exactly what shame takes away from you, the landscape of anatomy that gets subtracted entirely.
—
A faceful of blowout fractures. A cavity in each cornea, irises resized by lack of light, same blank injuries for anyone to see.
She told them the clouds were broken ornaments without a box, they weren’t even close.
She said the sky was replaced by means of riot control, they threw it in a back room, probably burned it.
She said you can’t replace a black hole, when all you have is a body full of black holes.
Silver lining of a sudden vein. Just had to cut it cleanly, let it find it’s type.
—
They told me it was over, and I watched her.
Woke up to an empty waiting room, a blanket kite corpses covering the bed. I told myself not to forget and then I left a note for her instead
Jillison, the ripples on the mirror show up as shadows below your skin. I always thought if you left me and of course I hoped it would be then.
jordan tierney 
How could any of that be your fault? But then you seize agency, and say “hell yes, I did it to myself, for some unknown reason you son-of-a-bitch, and you were just the vector of my great power, you had nothing to do with it, I don’t forgive you, I pity you! Stay there, with the rest of them.”
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