The most tender part of my heart stings like alcohol in scraped knees. I locate it in the burn. Flesh sliding into concrete. Grass smells the sweetest when your head is slamming in to it, I swear. I miss white zinc and dried blood. Blisters popping with salt on my heels, making it hard to run. Sun fish gills. I swallow everything I remember about our life like a dry touch of strawberry wine. 

When I come back to visit, my lungs suddenly calm in the air. It drips with Marlboro smoke, vapors of shine and barbeque, the stench of dip. My eyes become water again and I share them in the palm of my hand. Green choppers disappear into yellow clouds, pines rustling in the wake. When I come back I feel the weight of a child on my right hip and the silky fur of a dog on my legs.

I wanted to tell you I had my first kiss last year at 5 in the morning. The air was vapid and the blue nylon of his tent whispered into my back. I kissed him three times and left. An hour later I saw the light break, colder and cleaner than his mouth.

Now I come home from Michigan and mourn this life like a nun. I wear black and pale orange, wrapping night where it meets dawn on my shoulders. I open windows wide against the woods and find gospel in swamp frogs. I break toes and bury my heart in the blue leather of grandma’s bible. I let my dog sleep on my bed for the warmth, because she momentarily fills the gap between my chest and the mattress.

Everything hurts, Mama. I think about red clay. How it sticks to the tough soles of our feet. I want to be baptised in the hot, brown waters. I want to smell like skin. To be dirty again.
If I hadn’t left I might have the courage to say I would rather ache. I’d rather the blip of space between the helicopter and the black sky, the shifting street lights. The perfume of pine straw and deer carcasses.  
When I think about it Mama, I’d rather hurt, than not.