I like scratching the paint off of barns and garages and feeling the thrill just thinking of the splinters that will inevitably bury themselves beneath my fingernails.
I know it should hurt, but I never feel anything. Before I know it, there's a neat little pile of ash at my feet, speckling my skin with freckles, freckles like someone took a filmstrip and held it to the sun, looked at everybody's black teeth and laughed as the sun burned orange and pink on the heads of all their friends.
I wish someone would take a picture of me when I wasn't expecting it and it'd come out looking on purpose. I like those kind of pictures that everyone else likes, distressed and antique and new, from the 40s and the now.
I like it best when the paint peels off in wide strips and it stretches across the rotting wood beneath, but it doesn't break. It's as moist as it was when it was painted on, and it lies limply against your skin, a few crumbs of it breaking off. But you can shake it around and nothing happens to it.
I wish I could remember the names of all the books I've ever read. There are some with crinkled covers and some that are blank and cold. I remember one, The Dragon Garden. But I'm not sure it even existed. I found it in the school library with "WITHDRAWN" bruised on almost every page. I wish I would've stolen it.
I'm determined to defy all the expectations I've created for myself at least once. I'm determined to chip the paint off someone's wall while they're in the bathroom, to scratch my name into a windowsill with a pen. I need to make a mark somewhere. I need to learn to live before I just start to survive.
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