Touch Your Insides to My Insides
by Mira Gonzalez and Heiko Julien

I am trying to create a tangible experience
in your car and my hair is wet.

It is 3 in the morning.
We are at a gas station.
You are thinking about distance
and about wrinkles on our brains,
how we are permanently encased
between the width of our skulls.

I think that I would like to
push my head against your head
for nine and a half years.

Then you will understand something
about my internal organs,
how they felt confused and alone
when I saw your face from the perspective
of four thousand planets,
when I woke up from a dream
and promised I wouldn’t text you,
when I felt an emotion as a placeholder
and touched every inside part of you.


I’m just trying to breathe over here.
You know as well as I do
what it’s like.
You’re just not thinking about it right now.

You’ve struggled to catch your breath.
You’ve fallen off your bike before, probably.
You’ve (probably) gasped,
like during a movie,
When someone said something really cool/rude/sexy.
I am saying something.
Am I saying something
cool/rude
(probably not sexy but im just flustered).

Hey.
I think we could still be
‘together’
even though
we dont really
‘like’
each other
that much
anymore.
I think we could still
‘do this’
for a while
longer
if we just established some
‘ground rules’.
I think we could
stay
‘together’
even though
it doesnt really
feel
‘good’.


I’m just trying to breathe over here.
You know as well as I do
what its like.
You’re just not thinking about it right now.

You’ve struggled to catch your breath.
You’ve fallen off your bike before probably.

You know how it feels when
you swallow a pill and it becomes caught
in your throat.

You are holding me back, somehow,
maybe not.

At night you fall asleep with one arm on me.
Your face is mostly plain.

You know that love will never feel like
being pushed off the edge of a cliff.

Reading your emails
I can feel something motionless
at the base of my head.

You are better than me because
I don’t eat food anymore
and you exercise sometimes.

Mostly you are better because you hate me.

If we just establish some
‘ground rules’
I think we could
stay
‘together’
even though
it doesn’t really
feel
‘good’.