Apples to oranges to faceplants.

Let's go on the way it's supposed to go on. I'll be Nancy Sinatra, and you'll be the person who laces up my boots. I'll wow you, dip you, and twist you with my "cool". I'll chain smoke and my teeth will only get whiter, breath more compelling, and lungs stronger. That's the first path, the one we never should have wavered away from. But we're coming up to a fork, and it looks like either I'll need to learn to fly, and you'll need to learn to swim.

When the ankles and knees break the body collapses in on itself. Like a 1940s stiff cotton doll drowned, even after the several times your mother told you she couldn't go into the bathtub with you, she's an "antique". I learned this last winter when I chased you down the street in Northgate, and asked if I could still write about you, you told me to get out the tape recorder you had boughten me and be who I was supposed to, that you were sorry and another fire would never burn as bright as the one you had for me. I've been watching my life roll passed me like the sound of traffic, from that same spot, my legs useless, surrounded by blood and my belongings, my left ear and eye to the ground, the world makes a lot more sense right-angled and sideways.

The nickname originated five years ago, three years into your stalking of me, you had been watching me since I was fourteen and I didn't even know your name until the twentieth time we'd met. You'd send me IMs, and emails, go out of your way to be where I was, for years, and years, and my eyes were closed to you.When I finally gave you a breath it was only to buy some cocaine from you, I was 17, and fresh out of rehab. It took you six months from that point to get me to consider considering you. Oh, I'm getting off track here... The nickname. The nickname came from a conversation where I simply asked

"Would you rather be a fish or a bird? I'd be a fish, I love the water, if I could I'd be in it all of the time, I'd swim and swim and swim. Everything is quiet down there."
"Well, I'm absolutely terrified of water, I hate it. So I'd be a bird I suppose. I'd come and swallow you up and take you on little outings with me"
"Well aren't you sweet?"

I don't remember the last time I went swimming.

It's a catch 22, this thing I have between myself and you, you, the public, you who I desperately want to tell things to, rip my heart out for the billions of you if maybe even only two of you came back with understanding in your response, yet I'll babble about the beginning and you'll never hear the end, never informed enough to care, just curious enough to assume. So safe, in this wretched womb, I'll sleep until you wake me up again.