Bring me a cup of blood diluted with tears. Explain to me how it is that one and one cannot be just anything yet infinity and negative infinity and the spaces between the parts nobody cares enough to see can be everything. Why are you drowning me? Steep me neck-high in sickeningly sweet melodies. Live because of me. Take a bite out of fear if you want the salt-speckled deeper, the electrified more. How many goodbyes are in every hello? Answer me. Silence me. Maniacally dog doubt. Pyrotechnically assault dreams far worse than beasts. Sip real coffee, the kind without snuck cubes of ice-smooth sugar. Wrap a scarf around your varicose veins because of its deep blue, not its warmth. Shake faiths. Lie to yourself more than anyone else. Drink infinity. How can eight letters be infinite? Breathe because you can. Sleep because sometimes, you cannot. Break when you see him, lust when you don’t. Hide a mirror in the back of your second self as a constant reminder of how drastic the before was from the after, the during was from the still during. Seize hate like a fury. Ensnare love to crush it into ashen dust, to crinkle traitors into fingerprints. Laminate hearts you left. Devour those you didn’t leave. Why aren’t you willing to perish at any moment?

Katherine Du is a sophomore at Greenwich Academy. She writes a column for the Darien Times, edits for Polyphony H.S., and interns for the Greenwich Free Press and the Blueshift Journal. I have been recognized by Scholastic and published by Teen Ink and Eunoia Review.