You claw at me like my skin

is the wallpaper in the houses we once raged in.

You liked breaking TVs, and once

 

I was drunk but still drove you

to get stitches. There so often, the nurses nicknamed you

Staples. I liked somersaulting off roofs

 

into pools. We were glinting, unconfined.

That one night, in my building hallway,

you smashed the exit sign,

 

just because you had formed a fist.

The CDC doesn't say how recklessness spreads,

but I bet it was when, on my knees,

 

I picked up the pieces.

Tonight, I drove to your house, wasted and itching

to blister your neighbor’s garage

 

with paintballs, just because the guns were in my car.

I’d thought us glitter. But germs

are always searching for a new surface.