you wrote Knotted Girl a letter when you were ten years old, eight years before you met. Knotted Girl didn't reply, but you were patient because, good girl you were, you knew she'd answer eventually and all the love hidden in a blue box inside you would then neatly unfold itself. even at ten, you remembered this happening before and knew therefore it would happen again. (all love repeats itself all love is nothing but a repetition and repetition is the only way to speak to love.) genius, said your letter, is loss of control; by that rational killing, shitting, and drinking are genius. in the loss of control the regain of feeling rushing back into its sources and your sinews and bones squeezing together to hold on to it. no though--feeling retreats back into gray matter and dissipates, must be taunted and provoked to reappear. come out and play, you say, but it takes more than that to kill your mind for a few moments, your mind is vigorous and autonomous and must be battered into rare submissions by sensory/emotional overloads.

to be close to that thing, you touch it, it quivers like flesh around an open wound, or you touch it, it bites your fucking finger off.

during the eight years before you met Knotted Girl, your mind said this:

i had this friend
i wanted to see you
i tried to make noise
i find your face
but nothing came out
so exquisitely cold
my friend forgot my presence
and your hands also
while in the same room with me
why don't you put them
sound sneered at me
inside me, just for a minute
would you come here

so i can do more than guess
no don't touch me
at their coldness

today, Knotted Girl's legs are crooked from a car crash, but she doesn't mind. she says it's technology reshaping the body, and that rather than reject it people should come to terms with the changing times and learn to desire it. but you have a thing for good-looking legs and can't stand your now-deformed girlfriend. fun at first for its newness, look I'm fucking a cripple, now the thrill is gone and it's a turn-off. the boy in you is cowardly, afraid of sickness like all men, always afraid of unwanted creeping thoughts, running bursting with health striving for health. you're envious of athletes-how lucky to run, to keep one's mind in check through physical exertion. repeat several times: if brain spins out of control, push yourself till thoughts are soaked into increased heart rate and rapid breathing, desiccated by body salt they are only so much water to be sweated out.