I took a blanket and swaddled myself after a shower; it was sticky on my skin, and when I dried like a shell you take home from the beach, the blanket was still wet, and it would keep me from drying completely. The blanket would fall into my lap, and I’d get little goosebumps all over my back. The basement is so cold in that house. 

It’s a strange feeling: a lack of love. Really it's the opposite of strange– ordinary, regular, suburban. For me, when I become aware of it, the feeling overwhelms my body in every place but my eyes. I can’t cry. Often I scream in my car at no one but the quiet dust spectators that float in the air around me or sit in the passenger seat. Today I screamed on my way home from an errand I ran for my mother: “Why will no one love me,” ” No one will love me—” a selfish and stupid attempt to make sense of a senseless thing. Of course my friends and family love me, but as we all know it’s different to be held and seen naked, sad, happy, vulnerable, angry, horny, and still, loved. I have loved. I have loved so many times. And with every bone in my body, I am tired and heavy. I am prepared for the weight to press me down and grind at my body until I have gone smooth like a stone run over by waves, soft around the edges. Heavy and unmoving. Unaffected. There but not there. Just existing despite the world. 

I wrote once to a boy, that my wish was for him to lay out dead leaves on the sidewalks so I could hear the sound of them breaking under my feet where I walked. Today, I am in a different place, it's colder here, and the wind does His work for me. The wind loves me more than anyone else does– ever will. Maybe that’s the nature of a girl, or maybe just the nature of me. Maybe when the wind knows a girl cannot bear to live any longer, He lays down orange leaves for her to crunch, and he bites her face and blushes her cheeks. I’d like to fuck the wind. Because He knows me. Knows me when he comes into my room at night through the window by my bed. Knows me when he dries my eyes.

What if I wrote all day? What if for all of today, I wrote? And I didn’t stop. Would somebody one day like to know what it sounds like to shrink real small, step onto my tongue, and crawl up into my mind? And just watch, beside the road, and see all of the cars going by. I don’t have secrets. The only reason you don’t know me is because you don’t want to. What you love best about me is what you imagined was in my head.

Growing up, I was the only sober person in the room– Shirley Temple, polka dots in the corner of the bar while my dad would play shows. “You’re a kid? Fuck school. Get out of there.” I was used to hearing those, I’d just smile, get back to my red and white striped straw until my dad would call me up to play. I would wink at people from the stage. “These Boots Were Made For Walkin,” and I would bat my eyes. I was probably about eleven years old. And drunk, and fat, the crowd loved it. And they wouldn’t know me, and I suppose it was fine. 

Since I learned to tie my hair in pigtails with a set of unforgiving rubber bands that would tear out strands of my black coiled hair, I’ve stared at the sun and waited for my eyes to cry. I liked how the sun would eat up the whole room. My mother told me I needed to learn to self-soothe. It was because she was so rarely there to hold me. Very busy meetings with her small tobacco-filled stick friends. I did learn. I would hold myself when I cried, wipe the tears from my eyes, and tell myself things like shh it’ll be alright. I’d brush my own hair behind my ears to make up the space on my cheek to hold my own face. I would read myself bedtime stories and sing myself songs: frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez vous? Dormez vous? The classics of course. I wrote songs and stories about people like you, and when that wasn’t enough I found something else to do. A little bottle with my name on it lived in my closet. They were prescribed to me. Of course. I learned a new way to make things disappear. To put in a bag, all the pain, and the fear. To save that for later, when it wore off. I found different things. They came and went. Different people. They came and went too. They loved me and kissed me and changed and left. And I was alone again, with my different things, and a big big bag– the bag with the pain and the fear. 

A few years ago I fell in love with a boy, I admired how his hips were soft like mine, and how he dropped little ginger kisses on my cheeks. We were just like two doves with our little wings wrapped around one another, finding new places to laugh and cry and sleep. Everything was new, I was just learning how to breathe, but I stopped being afraid because I had him with me. I loved the nervous way that he used to try to speak. I’d sit just admiring him while he struggled with his speech. I never minded in the slightest, and I would wait as long as he might need. And then eventually he’d find all the words to say something kind, something sweet. He left lollipops in my locker every day of the week. I kept a collection dum dum wrappers always in my pocket with me. A little reminder of him, someone sugary and sweet. That boy who I loved, who I lost. One day he grew sour, spoiled over, and hardened like sap. I remember he once told me that he could never hurt me. He said it was impossible, all he wanted to do was tuck me into blankets and brush my hair. People change. It’s awful. And what’s worse is that once they’ve changed, they’ll never exist again the way they used to. 

I believe that I can be loved. Only now I know, it won’t last. And who would be brave enough to accept love like that? Love that’s temporary. Love that will only exist as a memory. Memories aren’t real. 

When my grandma died, I was living at home alone. I flew out to New York the next day with some family, and I remember my cousin asking his mom where Grandma went. I laughed hard, and then I started to cry. What a good question. At Jewish funerals, we don’t see the body. I asked my mom if I could, and she told me I wouldn’t want to. That Grandma looked awful, that it would ruin Grandma’s life for me. Another Jewish tradition is digging the grave. I lowered the coffin into the ground and shoveled dirt over it. I never saw her body though. And I think that because of it, I felt that I really never knew where she went, and while I don’t understand how it’s possible, I know she doesn’t exist anymore. I think of her, but I can’t smell her or touch her. Memories will never be enough. All I have is what exists now. 

Maybe it’s that my mother and I don’t get along anymore. That every word that hangs on her tongue falls unripely onto me, the grass. And yet, I need the shade of her branches, and the fruit she bears. And yet, she needs my soil and water. And my water runs dry as I give and give. And I know that we are both trees, and we are both the dirt. But rarely are we simultaneously two of the same. Both trees planted and quietly resting, growing fruit and yellowing our leaves. More often, we are giving or we are taking, but I used to be a girl, and she used to be a mother.

Change is the enemy and spouse of my love. It gives, and it takes. Change is God, and it gives me life, and life gives me everything, and then it takes it all away. If only the present could last forever. But then, I wouldn’t know the love I’ll have in 20 years and then the love I’ll have on my deathbed. There’s nothing I hate and love more than the unrelenting and rude changing nature of things. What is constant? If not a lover, if not Grandma, if not the wind, if not myself? There will never be anything to hold onto. God gives us sleep to ease the pain of life, God gives us death to finally be released from the cycle. 

Life, however, is short. That’s why my philosophy doesn’t lead me to the conclusion that I should kill myself. Rather, I’ve decided to put up with being alive and to extract from it what I can– to allow life to run me over and throw me around. I believe it’s the only way to truly experience being a human. Time is unforgiving. But life must be in constant motion, or else we would really understand what it is that we’ve lost. Is it better to have time to stop? Or are we grateful for the chaos? Everything we touch Changes and everything that touches us Changes us. The only constant thing in this world is its constant rotation, movement, growth: Change. One must find resignation or comfort in Change. I chose resignation. 

I love to be in the sun when ribbons fall from my hair. And they cover bits and pieces of what I can see. I love to be tired and see through my flyaway hairs. And my skin is hot and I press my cold hands to my warm face, and I am lazy because her lack of care for the world seeps into me, and nothing really matters because I’m warm now. And I’m in the passenger seat of her bruised and battered black car, and the sun heats the torn-up seats. And I forget about my mother and the things she will ask of me, and I lay my head back and I close my eyes for a while and I can see the hot through my eyelids. I open my eyes every few moments real real lazily and I see again the sun peaking over stained rooftops and through palm trees. I hold her and the late afternoon sun dearly to me for how they let me forget everything just for a little while and cover me with a real soft blanket that gives me just a short little while to breathe. 

The feeling of loss is still here, though I would take great pleasure in slaughtering it. Beating it in until I could be certain it was dead. And then beating it more. Just to be even more certain. But it remains. Rude and peaceful. It builds a home in my stomach throat and mind. And rudely and peacefully it breathes in stretching me out wide, and it contracts shrinking me down. And helplessly, I allow it to. To make itself comfortable. And then I beat it down. And then I ignore it. And then I remember it. And then I slap it across the face. And then I cry to it. And then I give up again. And I just watch it. Resentfully. Hopelessly. I mourn for every changing moment.