The first time I held something you'd written on, all that had been written was a 40, circled in green pen and underlined twice.

The last time I held something you'd written on, it was the coordinates of the spot where you buried your heart.

The first time you looked at me as an equal, I was reminded of being sixteen, of handing my little brother a lit cigarette, of the both of is resignedly accepting our fate.

The last time you looked at me as an equal, we were on someone else's upholstered couch, speaking of sacrifice. But what I was really sacrificing when I got you in return?

The first time you saw my home, you looked at it the way my father used to, and I wondered for a fleeting second if you were going to start passive aggressively cleaning. I didn't know how often in the future I would make that destructive comparison.

The last time you saw my home, I think, was after I had left it for good.

The first time I realized what you had done to me was long after the last time you had laid eyes on me.

My life now is this empty box I made to fill before I knew you'd made impossible for me to leave anything anywhere for too long.

My life now is this empty box, and I keep sanding at the edge from the outside, hoping to touch on abyss inside and never quite reaching far enough to break it open.

I held you once, do you remember?

I was scared, watching cat-mouse-warden-cell mate-predator-prey-father, watching you fall apart.

You got me like a mouse.

Have you ever seen a cat catch a mouse? Really play with it, catch it and let it go again and again, let it think its life is it's own again.

Whether the cat wants the mouse or not, whether the cat even lets it live or not,

The mouse's life ended when the cat first touched it, and there's no pretending otherwise.

Maybe I should've run after the 40 at the top of the paper, known that I could never do well in a world you thought you could control.

But when it came down to it, I wanted to find your heart worse than you did.

I hope they leave my empty box in the desert sand,

Somewhere out there near your heart.