You took one look at the thick of my cotton mouth, practiced pout, bare feet on floorboards and you pegged me as a runner, a thing always chasing its own tail, an animal, a little girl who means well but doesn’t understand that it hurts when she pushes other people down; you knew I’d shove you around, pick you apart like puzzle pieces, stick my fingers in your cracks and split you open to see the inside because I am so damn naive that I am always expecting a sweet, soft center even when there’s none to be had. You did not want to be smashed open and dived greedily into. You pressed your mouth to my fingers and toes, wrote prose into my palms where every other line began with “No” and ended with a reason that you could not bear to stay.