I. Estlin
Estlin sits with her jeans thrusting her legs apart, her neck curving toward her crotch. She’s trying to forget why she’s awake, and her eyes are hanging open. Estlin’s hands are gripping her pants like the skin underneath is a weapon, and she feels powerful because she was able to lose so much.
Tears are waiting to drip from the cup of her eyelids but she doesn’t know how to let them go. Her back is trying to become smaller, and she spreads her thighs to let herself fall in.

II. Jeff
his mother bought him Converse
and when he sits down he
tosses his feet like he’s proving something.
His lap is for guitars
and sometimes he’ll play and we’ll
readjust ourselves into an audience. Our palms
flatten behind our crossed legs
and create stencils of the ground.

III. Elliott
Books were bridges in between Elliott’s knees, and when we were waiting for pizza he took my copy of Catch-22 and rebuilt himself. We were far apart because neither of us knew how to move closer, and when the pizza came we put it next to the soles of our shoes.
Elliott told me that he’d never been kissed. My lips twisted against each other and I forced myself not to move. We sat the same way for a long time, leaning into ourselves and waiting for someone else to stand.

IV. Charlie
Charlie wants to organize himself
into a beat poet in the back of the English room.
He brought his writer friend a Ginsberg anthology once
to see if she could find herself hiding
under his bookmarks. Charlie sits
at his desk like he wants
to go somewhere else, and his friend
writes him down because she wants him
to come with her.

V. Brit
It’s dark when Brit throws herself into a rocking chair, and drunken mosquitoes spiral under the yellow lightbulb. Her elbow slaps against the wood of the armrest but she doesn’t feel it as she stares from the porch into the street. Cars are ignoring each other and Brit’s shadow huddles next to her. She tries to fit her knees into the chest and crumples into a used tissue, sobbing into the valleys of her papery skin.

VI. Wen and Mariah
Mariah liked to sit in the back of the movie theater because being anywhere else made her feel tall. They had gotten new seats and when I leaned back the velvet scratched my neck. It was Mariah’s idea to come because her favorite actor was in it and I came because she offered to buy me popcorn.
Mariah sat like she was in a hospital room and breathed harder when the guy came onscreen. I slouched lower, looking at the way she took popcorn. She adjusted herself as if she thought she was being judged, and I wondered if the actor ever went to see his own movies.

VII. Sebastian
He imagines himself on a hill,
taking his shoes off and letting grass
creep into his toes

He loves near the high school and
sometimes he’ll go onto the bridge
behind the football field because
he likes the way it sounds
when it’s quiet.

He closes his eyes so it looks like
night. The cement sits against him,
pushing his knees
When he stands he
spits himself out like a piece of gum,
leaving the ground warm.