Association

She breathed light and fire into everything, whole but not quite, the type who has this little part you know you could stretch open. She begs you to come inside and let her know you mean something, that she means something.

She tells you she is broken but she wears it like a badge, she says she loves too hard but she professes it like it’s her armour. It’s like she wants me to break her, to bruise her, it’s like she’s calling out to me to please prove that I really AM this worthless thing, this gaping hole hoping to be filled.

She comes through the door in old shoes with studs and kicks them off, feet up on the table talking about life and love, going backwards and forwards and swinging her hair, please love me I’m broken, please hate me so I remain that way.

I’m not sure how to fix her, she doesn’t want to be fixed, but I’m drawn in, the way you get drawn into a watching a car wreck or walking on hot coals, the way you pick up glass with your hands even though you know you shouldn’t. I wonder, sitting here with her hair over my face, if I too am broken by association.