She's laughing so hard she's really only screaming. With tears falling down her face and everyone around just stares. Family members with wide eyes and stories of her insanity. This is her insanity. let's make a spectacle, charge a dollar a head just to see. Come see her. The girl who moments ago was sneaking chocolate cake and twirling on deck ledges, glass pressed upon her legs. Cake and smiles in hand, pulled from reserve. Pulled from secret glowing lakes in the depth of underground caves.

Come see her now while she's wrapped around the finger of sad eyed poetry and her heart starts to feel that familiar ache. That old friend to hide her from failure. From Success. These are a different kind of tears. She says "Will you take me? will you have me?" and she's serious. She doesn't want this anymore. Doesn't want herself anymore. She's so sick of masks. She's so sick of duality.

A red ribbon round her neck, black hair still wet and fragrant. She wants you to hold her. Put your arms around. rock her back and forth. comfort her like a child. that is what she wants. to be rocked. slowly. sweetly. While the tears fall down.

Why can't you be happy, she wants to ask. She hears her name, foreign and strange and only discovered the night before. She hides. She sighs.

Here's a smile for you, here's a bond for you, the half of her that never could. There have been few things in her life: Family, Self, Adam and you.

Keep it together. keep it together. There's too many people for fall apart now. too many watchers, viewers. Too many with coins in their pockets and hands that don't know the beginning of anything. She feels their hidden sadness, runs away to be alone with hers. Her own bearable kind. She can't breathe. She sweats and shivers.

She almost wants a baby. Something small. only her own. To coo to. To weep to. Someone to whisper secrets to. someone to love her and hate her for it. Something to keep and hold close at times like this. You're never here for times like this.

She tells everyone of shared christmas and nobody cares. They don't care that she's lying. There are muscles inside of her contracting and releasing, and it's painful. She wants to vomit. wants to scream. Wants to roll into herself. wants to cut it out of herself. She shakes and no one notices, it's the normal kind.

She shuts the bathroom door and does. Not of choice, she just feels awful. A dead chance at life and too much food mixing inside of her. it poisons her body.

A girl upstairs putting on shows and everyone laughs. It reminds her of stories she's read with different kinds of girls up different kids of stairs. with different kinds of dances and different kinds of expectations.

---

a different story now:

Something inside of you makes her weep. Loves you enough to feel your pain. Reads enough to know you're the better writer, isn't jealous but is embaressed to know you read enough to know it too. Inside of her, deep deep inside of her she knows you're more than beautiful and hopes the whole world can see it too. She wants to give you book deals and popularity and a thousand things to make you prosperous. Famous. or whatever it would take to make you happy. That's all she wishes, all she hopes. And that's completely honest. completely honest.