1. You collect my insecurities in bottles, shake them up in my face, turn them on their heads and then set them free.

2. Being around you always made me feel like small prey.

3. Until I met you my heart never tripped over itself so much trying to break free of its cage.

4. Why do I look for your praise? Picking at crumbs by the pinch and sucking whatever nourishment I can get from it. You never really hand out freebies anyway.

5. When did I start hating my own bed sheets? They don’t smell like danger, like run, like get away as quickly as you can, like a moth being burned alive by a roaring flame.

6. Please, please, do not comfort me. Like bad dreams make you worry. Like enough strokes against my skin will keep the bad juju away.

7. You are the bad juju.

8. There are these figures in the tall grass and I don’t think they’re here for me.