They say you can't judge a book by its cover but that's all I've ever done. There is some kind of magic in running your fingers over the matte cover of a children's book. The foil stamped scales of a rainbow fish, the curious eyes of the coiled yellow snake. The exterior describes the pages with a steadfastness, pulling you into water colored dreams.

 

 But now I'm reading Tolstoy, with a cigarette in between my teeth. We've been fighting for weeks. The kind that goes in circles and returns with the inertia of a bus slamming on its brakes. I lurch forward.

 

    A knock on the door causes the nerves in my thighs to shoot up my body like lightning. I look bad. Not in a hot girl interrupted kind of way. Soft girls always glisten when they cry, the hue of their iris becomes light and dewy. Bad girls get the smeared supermodel eyeliner. But I don't get either, when I cry my nose triples in size. My complexion settles in a ruddy tone. I use my cigarette as a bookmark and slide the latch to the left, the chain dangles.

 

 He was just standing in the dim hallway, like a man with more conviction than he could ever carry. His brown biker jacket was stiff enough to stand on its own and maybe that's what was holding him together. His freckled honey eyes stared into mine, like a crater on the moon.  His eyes were starving.

My heart is a cluttered junk drawer. I keep things that I don't need, in hopes that I might use them again. The curves of his face were soft. His hands were warm and pounded a red bloody pulse. His pigment, a collection of generations of lovers. But he is hollow. He was a husk, torn apart easily and picked up by the wind.

 

    He crossed the threshold into my apartment and didn't say a word. He opened his mouth and punctured my iridescent inflatable chair with his canines, the pop made me flinch. He folded it into a tiny square and swallowed it whole. I couldn't believe my eyes. How was this humanly possible? He gnawed on my childhood scrapbook until the pages were soggy. He swallowed that too, the remains sunk deep into the black lagoon. The same one I jumped into at ten. I never thought I would reach the surface.

 

 He started rifling through my objects in a frantic state, gauging the importance of the items in his hand. He found a tiny bible, pastel and blue. The edges of the pages glittered gold. He ripped the thin fragile pages out, one by one. He placed them in between every tooth and smooshed them together like a flaky pressed pastry. It was the bible I got when I was baptized. I knew he was hungry, so I allowed him.

 

Anytime he filled himself, it emptied me. He washed it down with a tiny tincture of Holy Water. He crushed the vial in his palm. Pieces of glass scattered on the carpet like stars.

 

 He started rifling through my delicates drawer with his oil stained fingers. His back was facing me as he lifted a pink pair of panties with white lace trim. There was a name stitched into the side. Badly, I was barely learning to sew when I had my first crush. His name, immortalized in the seam. The black thread was as prominent as he was. He picked them up and dangled them above his gaping hole. I didn't know what to do, so I pushed him.

 

He plunged forward and fell for hours, until he hit the bottom of the piney plywood base. I shoved the drawer closed and dropped to my knees. I couldn't allow him to leave, and take so much of me.