stories

i want to write, i want to tell my stories. i want to tell you about the time my face got smashed when i was eight and point to the way my eye still doesn’t quite open; i want to wax poetic about the night i slept with a girl i’d been a little in love with as the ocean rolled through. i want to talk about the clinical bleakness of the florida malls; i want to talk about the pink-grey color of the sky and the sound of the wind as it builds and grumbles. my stories exist and i might even exist but i am empty of their telling. my stories slide around my body like caramel: you pluck them from the crook of my elbow and you coax them from my lips, but i cannot get them off me.