My invisible friend is an insomniac.

Dad was always in bed sheets or aeroplanes,

Mom was in the garden or sewing machines,

Brother and Sister too old to play fight, too young for therapy,

so I turned to Steve, who was invisible.

He was the reason I never hit my head on the moon,

and he was my cactus pincushion,

spiking the dreams

the dreams that I drank,

and he kept me up all night with his prod, saying

"We're safe as long as we're awake. Let's be dinosaurs, eating vegetarians or let's play God."

And we'd splash moths trapped in the bath with tap water,

watch them disintegrate in a linoleum tomb,

and then we'd masturbate with Vick's Vapor Rub,

and then we'd shoot cakes we found in the soap dish, spit bubbles, gargle, choke, breathe.

Steve assured me that I could be invisible, preserved from school permanently-

from the cutouts of my hair,

the left hand bully hooks,

the cock scribbled in bile in my physics book,

the mock sex sessions at lunch break I spent bent

over the concrete v holding up the biology staircase,

bummed by eights in blazers, face full of old yogurt,

filmed by milk shaking chimps, held down and hurt by my schoolmates,

who were telling me that I was the only girl in the place.

And I'd return home, and tell my mom,

feed her plates of lies because I was porcelain with Bunsen burns on my skin,

like marking someone has an exact science,

but Steve told me never to break.

I was safe as long as I was awake.

I was in year 8, old enough to wear a blazer and regulation shoes,

to cycle to school by myself,

and know that I wanted to love the teachers that gave me bad grades,

and that I could even throw my heart as a hand grenade and leave someone amputated at this age,

but none of this made the world a safe place.

In my room, Steve spoke to me.

He said, "I've seen your spine.

It's candle stick anorexic.

You're a wicked wax figure.

You are melting, transparent, just like me.

Keep going.

Soon you'll be so invisible I won't even be able to believe in you."

So I killed Steve with a gallon of mouthwash,

burnt in a puddle on the floor,

and I was no longer invisible.

My dad and his jetlagged posture picked me up, carried me to bed.

In between him and my mum I rested,

back to when I was three,

crying for naked chests to hide in,

but I still couldn't sleep,

despite my parents telling me to think of deserts.

I pushed my fingers into my father's meaty back,

making camel humps in his dreams,

tapping Morse code for "I just want to be safe",

only to press out his tired response: "Are you still awake?"