A list will help

1. When I run my hands over the ink on my shoulder, there are the valleys and peaks of the Cordillera stamped with a gentleness that is strong and insistent and leaves tracks.
2. Sometimes I worry that the tattoo hasn't healed right because I look at pictures of the pythons on other people's skin and they are smooth as their namesake.
3. A friend of mine said she and some of her friends were going to journey up to the tiny village high in the mountains where my friends and I bled together.
4. Everyday, there are two clear moments: the second I decide to wake up and the haze of writing something that sounds natural.
5. Everyday, too, I look forward to tho things: the silence of my room locked against the world and the right things to say.
6. Everyday, too, I wonder what kind of life I'm building.
7. A coursemate asked for book recommendations on writing poetry. I didn't have to glance at my bookshelf to know I was the wrong person to ask.  
8. I keep thinking my body was made to be touched, too, yes? A dip here, an empty space for what, a hand? And it is warm and pulsing, too, and in some places even beautiful to look at. And then I wonder, too, what will happen when a lover discovers the ridges of an unfamiliar terrain, maybe slide a hand up to my shoulder and find there the goosebumped flesh, the ridgeline of a scar. Maybe the lover will hesitate then pause to ask does this hurt? 
9. And I will say of course not, not anymore. Where were you when my body cushioned all the hurt, then? 
10. I keep thinking my body was made to be touched, too, yes? But I don't want anybody to look at it, appraise it for its net worth, judge its ungainly shape. I don't want you to misjudge me, see, for what I have done to myself. You are here with me at a singular point in time and still learning, we orbit each other now and for a while we will go nowhere, sacrifice that, to orbit each other and discover all the angles. 
11. I keep thinking my body was made to be touched, too, yes? I don't want you to think I overestimate sex. It is what it is. Fear will overwhelm you if you do not understand it and prefer ignorance. The act is neither sacrosanct nor devious, only natural and necessary. It must burn to think of something so outside the realms of our comprehension as to defy all moral judgement, but. Here, touch this and do it this way. Sex is only a way to communicate what? That you are hungry, too, for touch. In the end, love is also touch and intimacy, the eradication of closeness. But I hesitate to believe love must consist also of perfect understanding, only maybe the mercy of compromise, that habit of compromise that will pull you out of an argument for the sake of sleep and an uneasy peace.  
12. I've returned to writing The Hand She Was Dealt but the story keeps changing or else I haven't come up with anything good enough. It burns that my process is so slow and so cumbersome and so goddamn difficult. I am difficult.