I. You forget your childhood with its bright yellow cassette player, dressed up as a Disney princess. You forget what your nightmares used to be back then, the smell of your school uniform, how long it took to drive to Cornwall at night-time. The quiet of your colouring pens, trying to draw inside the lines.
II. You forget what it was you once said you felt passionate about. Beneath your skin, under your hair, layers of your mind are being peeled away, You are breathless, trying to be who you are by saying you are and trying to be someone other than who you are. You never forget the numbers that tilt you into pride or despair each morning. Spend too much attention on the bones that appear when your skin shrinks back into them.
III. Life has been stretched out in front of you and it's a fresh paved road. Dizzying, the smell of so many asphalt miles, the thought of all those that you can't allow to be empty miles. The road stretches out in front of you.
IV. There is a girl with a wilting name who carries pink half moons in her palms, birdlike and blue. You tried at first, but you could not cry for her while your fingers were a gun down her throat. Not a girl with eyes used to be open clearly, curious blinks, now turned into confusion and bitterness and so, so much pain. You don't know her pain, only yours, and hers is yours as well. She never asked for this. She never asked to wear so many costumes.
V. You are in a car and the road is nothing like it used to be. Your pedal is too close to the floor. The girl whose name was wilting has no name anymore. She is shrinking out of sight, reflected in your rear-view mirror. A month ago, perhaps, she would have tried to run after you, begging you, do not leave yourself behind. Now, those eyes were violent and hateful and she was defiant. Thumb stuck out, disappearing into the distance. You forget her but she will be back because she took all the vengeance you had in the backseat away with her.
VI. The road stretches out ahead of you.