She is a Stuttering soliloquy. A wounded symphony played by an orchestra of her family’s I-told-you-so's. A tattered woman who bleeds like an oak tree. Her life story is just a sandpaper love song written on a napkin full of all the reasons why no one should ever try to hug the rain. You always end up soaking wet and by yourself.

She: a rusty faucet, dripping self esteem that falls quicker than short skirts in motels when the sun blinks for too long. You see, when confidence hits the ground, it echoes like sin in a room full of God, and I could hear her coming a mile away. She has violin strings for legs, a graveyard of awkward treble clefs buried in her knees and I can see the suffering inside of the concert of her walk.

Her footsteps: they sound like the ignition to a father’s car the day that he decided that he was too thirsty to pour water on his own seed so when she calls me “daddy” I never really get excited because I know that it’s just the title that she gives the branches in her life that are destined to be abducted by the wind.

She comes over on Wednesdays. She walks into my room like a question that neither one of us has the courage to ask. Y’know sometimes, words, they get too heavy to sit on the ivory pedestals that we’ve built inside of our mouths. Y’know sometimes, our actions, they join hands and they become behaviors that are too complicated for lips to say out loud, so instead, we just liberate our flesh letting skin speak on our behalf, the language of those who are just as afraid of commitment as they are of being alone and we speak it like it’s our native tongue.

Honestly, I can’t tell you her favorite color… her middle name… or what her face looks like with the lights on. All I know is that we are both allergic to the exact same things. Things like compliments, the word beautiful and someone saying I love you with arms full of acceptance and sincerity on their breath.

Most days, I wonder what she carries in the luggage underneath her eyes. I wonder if those bags ever get too heavy for her face. But instead, I let those questions sandcastle inside of my stomach. I amputate the parts of me that have grown fond of her smell.

And I wash my sheets.

And I think to myself, You know most men are proud of things like this.