Something Old

Last night I felt as if I would implode.
 I wanted to go over to the person who knew me when my edges were still visible, back when we didn't mind getting roughed up. I wanted to scream and I wanted to cry and I wanted to ask if she recognised me, if she knew what had happened.
I wanted to say I've changed, and I don't know if I Iike it.
She used to call me a feisty little bitch, and we were so, so young and tough, and scrappy. We started fights and compared bruises. And wore our blood like trophies.
I thought I was already broken and she'd sit with me while I cried.
 And it's not like I think those were the best days of my life or anything. It was all a long time ago, and we were children, even if we didn't know it.
But I wondered if she recognised me, in this body.
With the soft curves and long hair and red wine lips. Packed into a dress and pretty little shoes. Quiet voice and restrained movements. Sweet and bland and light.
I miss my bones.
I'm still obnoxious on the inside, I long to say the wrong things and watch the shock register in peoples' faces as they struggle to formulate a response.
But I've learned to make small talk and ask about their families instead.
If you push me I'll still bite. Except for when I don't.
Except for when it feels like a punch thrown in my direction would hit and just keep going,
sinking into soft folds.
Like I wouldn't even feel it.
I find myself predictable and unfamiliar by turns. I have to get out of this town, or this head.
I can't tell anymore.
And I can't tell if it matters.

The Other Night

We played knuckle bones with a fistful of paper stars.
I thought about my child-mother playing them with the bones of a sheep.
Amielia played them with her own wisdom teeth.
I had metal heavy ones.
I tossed them and snatched them from the air until my own knuckles bruised, and my fingers swelled.

Hermit plan discarded.
Happy and tired.
Fin.