i.
//
i once had a dream about something my mother told me.
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she said i would lose my face if i put duct tape over my lips because the adhesive would suck the soul out of my physical and i would become a dog. i would become a dog but in the body of a stray cat—wandering through our neighborhood and crying for food but shying away from the sun when it offered to warm my coat because i believed i was always meant to be cold. i would be like a dog like a cat like a shadow unwilling to be broken by the sun. so i dreamed i was alone. you told me this was a silly dream to dream. ‘wake up,’ you said, but these words are no melatonin antidote. you blushed my cheek with a pillow. it was not enough, so you did my eyeliner.
//
i have learned to turn away from the calling; i put you in the veggie drawer to chill with my memories of god, like when i awoke to him and his knife at my bedside. he stabbed me in the heart but i had no heart and no blood so i could not die; i writhed.
//
there was once a time when i would pray every night with my father. we would clasp our hands together and, without tears, we would ask god to make sure there were opioids and cigarettes in heaven because we gave up on grandpa giordano and grandpa hall getting any better when we buried them.
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at my first funeral we spread the ashes of my grandpa across the pacific, and, all the while, i was so hungry. i remember the hunger now, just as i remember my name and then quickly forget it. everyday i have a different name. sometimes i borrow yours. i remember my mother once told me happy people get to keep their names, and so i assume the same must go for memories and pancreases. remember. remember. remember how i did not want you to walk me home in the cold.

ii.
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you say you want to hear about how i became my own savior but i wish you knew everything. i look back on my life and first i remember the day my beta cells popped and father almighty took me up in his arms. god and i started dancing on the highway median. family feud was playing in the hospital lobby. the receptionist was studying for med school. we were all busy passing away to steve harvey. and while i waited for someone in the er to get better or get on with it, i sucked on a nothing sandwich. i had a brief séance with god and i begged him, ‘just take it all the way. give me a name and i’ll keep it. i don’t want to be free.’
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three hours later and the doctor told me a human being can die any number of ways but i was lucky; if i was going to die, i was going to go out on a sugar high. i remember. the coma was slipping into the edges of my eyes so that i no longer saw my naked body in the mirror but some anatomical display of limbs being held together by nothing but the thinness of my skin.
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there’s a medical term to describe this, but i’m too scared to call it what it is. perhaps i say this to pretend such terrible pain is not an intrinsic part of my body. or perhaps i wish pain were its own human being, a person with a body i could point to and yell at. yell, ‘why do you want me in such terrible ways? look at what you started and failed to take all the way. you made me flirt with the afterlife without helping me set up the first date.
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i don’t know if i want to take it all the way.’
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the doctor told me i was lucky. i could have—and should have—died. but i didn’t. i just kept living.
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i was discharged from the hospital after a weekend stay. the staff told me from then on it was my job to just keep on living; they didn’t tell me living is an unpaid internship everyone is expected to have on their résumé.
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there is no strength left in these hands to pour another cup of coffee not meant for me to drink. and so i have come to believe there is no human being who can ever truly recover from grief.

iii.
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i was at the grocery store the other day picking out a watermelon. don’t ask me why. i was probably dreaming.
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all i remember is that i wanted a big watermelon. the kind that makes your mouth water when you think about it.
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but as i was looking at the watermelons, i realized they were all covered in stickers. every single watermelon. and i’m not talking about normal fruit stickers that are easy to peel off. these were like full-on bumper stickers. who puts a bumper sticker on a watermelon? it’s like they’re trying to advertise their fruit to someone in space. what astronaut is looking for a watermelon?
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and then i thought about it some more and realized outer space is probably the best place to eat a watermelon. just lounging out in the great big nothingness. eating some fruit.
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sometimes i wish i were in space. not just to eat watermelon, but i wouldn’t mind that either.
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sometimes i wish i could take a break and have some space. life and i have been going through a tough spot recently. i say, ‘darling, you’ve changed’. and life answers, ‘i’m changing all the time.’
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i have uncast myself from the part of the fool. i did not like being laughed at, so i became a comedian instead. i did not want to become my own savior. and yet
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i clasp my hands together and pray that i will one day become more than some set piece but a poem and a piano song and a polaroid picture of a golden field fading into moonlight all at once. let me abandon my body in the fruit and vegetable aisle of the grocery store. turn me into a flower on the grave of an astronaut who ate watermelon in space. maybe then i will forget the mirror and me, prying back my skin until i could only see the world through the thinness of my blood. i have come to summon all my poems out of prayer because
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i became my own savior when the astronauts in the er had no martian miracle cure to the ailments they brought back from the moon. and again when the watermelons at my bedside had no arms to take me up in. when god turned me into a dog in the body of a stray cat wandering through some random neighborhood. when i was crying for food but shying away from the sun when it offered to warm my coat because i believed i was always meant to be cold. and that i am actually dying a little bit all of the time.
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in my dreams i walk through the grocery store with a cart full of nothing. all the while, i try to convince myself god can’t hurt me anymore. but oh my god he hurts so much i am making a duct tape gag to bite back my humanity. the watermelon is not as sweet as i remember. not as sweet as my blood. i want to move on. i try to leave my body but i have slammed the knife down so hard i am still holding onto it.

iv.
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sometimes i wish we could take a break and have some space. iv.
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i go over to your place whenever you ask because you want it more than i want my own life. in the evenings you beg to teach me how to feel hungry, and i answer, ‘do you water a plant that is already dying?’ you cook anyway. the television is playing spanish dramas but i wish i had fallen asleep to steve harvey. please.
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stop feeding me.
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this body pays the price for dreams in insulin vials. i’m scared there is no human being who can truly recover from grief and that i am still passing away to family feud, so to say
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4 you have started to look at me differently. ‘darling, you’ve changed’, you say. and i am too scared to answer, ‘i’m dying a little bit all the time.’
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i tell you my life in pieces because that’s how i remember it: in the fragments between the joy you have offered up to my altar. i say i became my own savior and yet
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you are here. you walked me home in the cold. when we were eight you blushed my cheek with a pillow. you taught me how to do my eyeliner and find ripe watermelons at the grocery store. so when i say to forsake me know what i really mean to say is i love you so
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you make dying hurt again. i wish god could never take you away. i wish there were nothing left inside me for god to take away. i fear i live so close to death all the time that one day my insulin shots will fail me, and you will be alone. so
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forsake me; it is your time to eat. bloom. feel the innocence of your meal on your tongue, and never feel guilty. i love you for your endocrine system. your pancreas is one of the most beautiful things about you. stay in such a place where you will not know about life as an unpaid internship; do not try to piece together my broken body with your hands.
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do not show me how long i’ve been cold.
//

Hazel J. Hall (she/her) is a writer and poet powered by caffeine and insulin. Right now, she is pursuing an English degree while working on her personal projects. More of Hazel’s work can be found in Bending Genres, Wordgathering, and boats against the current, with other pieces forthcoming on HazelJHall.com.