Free Diary of a Human by Eliza Lentzski Page A

street. 
    Her barely-there ponytail is testament to her restlessness.  Her feet are always moving.  She, who knows me better than I know myself, with pretend languages and a past so recent on my memory.
     
    But she broke my heart and I broke hers.
     
     
    There’s a girl who l ives on my street. 
    She appears behind clouds of nicotine mist and her mouth, ripe like kiwi fruit waiting to fall from its stem.  She guards her secrets and her heart from even those who would surrender their teeth to merely hold her and nuzzle themselves beneath layers of finger paint.  She offers me shelter in her world of sunshine and puppies, an optimist to the end.
     
    But I’ve been hiding for too long.
     
     
    There’s a girl who lives on my street. 
    She seeks appraisal from the gentlemen callers who have trouble seeing past her plastic form.  There is more to her than flesh and teeth; she who is more vulnerable and fragile than all the other girls on my street.
    But you’d never know it.
     
     
    There’s a girl who lives on my street.
    She walks in circles on evenings dampened with rolling fog and lurking vampires.  She lives between words and paper cuts and tea stained papers and the humming keyboard on her desk.  A purple accent wall highlights an apartment where barren walls reveal so much of a life not yet lived.
     
    But I’m not ready to live.
     
     
    There’s a girl who lives on my street – or rather across the street from me.  She places women upon pedestals, only to witness them tumble after months, years.  She hides from the mirrored glass and misses out on the only woman she really needs.  Herself.  She with a heart that has outgrown her mortal body and a gentle smile that knows no frown.
     
    But she is the Marrying Type, and I cannot bring myself to rumple her freshly laundered bed sheets.
     
     
    There’s a girl who lives on my street. 
    She fears the disapproval of a family who loves her unconditionally, already knowing her secrets.  She kisses biting turtles and one-eyed mice and taught me to become more than a Miller girl.  She fears obesity and failure even though for her, both are impossible feats.  She leaves secret love letters and secret marks on my flesh.
     
    She has written on my body, inside and out.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Prologue
     
    0.3//it only hurts when i breath
     
    The hallway light spills into and pales the bedroom with a cheapened yellow glow and hums an unsung chorus. Outside I can hear the frigid howl of a winter banshee; she blows no colder than I have of late to those undeserving of my icy touch.
    The shifting of mattress and shuffle of fabric relay that you are still here. A sigh, a turn, and my eyes meet the gentle dip of your waist and hips rise up to greet my gaze. My throat burns raw from sleep and toxins that remind me of how commercial this town of mine is. Traded sweet, thick, wet air for a multi-screen theatre and a handful of stoplights.
    My senses should be overcome by the cherry cough drop I have surrendered to, but I am covered instead with you. A scent that has replayed itself over and over again in your absence. Once a memory, the scent now engulfs me. I am drunk with the moment and only can think how I could bottle this essence to remind me of this early morning, this hour, this minute, this flutter of eyelids and pursed lips.
    You inhale deeply in your sleep and I long to be the dampness that has collected on your lips if only to be briefly intimate, if only to briefly exist so close to you, if only to be carelessly licked away by a small pink tongue that pushes past perfect teeth and parted lips.
    But I remain in my place regardless of how my body hums in your presence. How I long to curl up and let the softness of your body smolder and smother my wildness. To find myself nestled in the delicate space where graceful neck finds defined collarbone.
    It is in these moments I realize I cannot continue with this pretense...I need to shed the coat and be