Paperweight Poetry

I have written you in my heart with my own blood, and not even OxiClean can get you out. -anna sluder

The fluorescent light over my head twitches and hums like a bug, and beside me an abstrusely thin line of water, patters down into the imposturous porcelain bathtub beside me, just enough to be able to circle around the drain and wane away like an exhaling chest, I think of turning the faucet so that it creaks and groans as it closes like muscles that are too tight to move, it must've been left open a little all night, but I know that the unwelcoming metal will dig into my hand, and the ligaments and tissues of my palm will burn and stretch like plastic in a fire, so I do not move. The girl waddles in, bare feet slapping the gashed tile, the light prattles on, twittering like someone had asked it to sing vibrato, it is inconsolable. She squats on the toilet in front of me without concern, unaware of her own bravery, the fat in her thighs smashed onto the porcelain spreads out like butter, she doesn't mind, she scrunches up her face, clenching her toes, small, sof