paintedpassion

I lay myself out on the operating table. A body I have reduced changes form under natural lights and Natty Lite, my hollow bones hold up my 1k-lb head on my t-minus 4 hour shoulders. I couldn’t include the collarbones. The head and porous ears were okay, but the eyes were crossed and the tease was doted on other you’s. The tongue in cheek because I left out the lips altogether. When they asked what it was like to date me, my lidless pupils replied, September 4th or October 18th? Best by your last in(de)cision. Cut off. You’re cute. I cut off the cuticles. You cut the crap. You crossed your eyes. I crossed my hips.  I cut out

I find you in the light that filters in through the cracks in doors left slightly ajar My hands trace the wood trying to read stories in the marks like rings around the bark of a tree. You take my splintered hands in yours and we compare. I follow the cracks in your cuticles and try to read if your stories are like my own. My lips find the cracks in yours and I try to find where light spills out of the cracks in our foundations in our hearts in our homes. I try to find the marks on you before you make a mark on me too.

The girl clutches a newspaper clipping hands trembling, she holds it over a fire. The same flame once extinguished in her vocal cords now burns in her body, burns off her hair, burns from her birth marks her holding the word weak over the sienna hues. The girl is not flight plans. She is not weather. Airplanes grow old and torch off their wings. The girl is not a plane. She is not paper. The girl covers her eyes as the televisions project pilots crashing planes on purpose. She builds paper planes that are too heavy to fly. She crumples forgiveness between her fingertips dry with ink and wet with sweat matted through her hair knotted togeth

I don’t want to build an igloo with you Snow could not hide the words we never said and did Our lips will not freeze Our minds will not numb If we did, they’d find our bodies Use us as art We could pretend to be ice sculptures But we won’t We will all melt away

if a train leaves the station at 500mph in the wrong direction all you can feel is crumbs your life is crumbs bread crumbs crumbling fingers numb dumbing down jaws clenched humming rum running down your lips lipping the words you miss kiss when you ask when did the world start when did you lose your train of thought maybe when you lost your train at the Trail of Breadcrumbs maybe you crumble

kiss the ashes of the shadow girl trade secrets through the candle wax but never feel her touch the dreams where she holds you in your sleep living behind your memory press the roses in the book lock the words inside your chest kiss the shadow air to rest

My skin broke open several times numb until I saw blood fading into a dull pink circling down the drain This was before-- back when the girls in the locker room pointed at my hairy legs, a hushed giggle I broke myself into something smooth bare, childlike vulnerable That was before I threw out the razor but continued to bleed every time the moon beamed full But I stopped breaking They laughed at body and called me "Werewolf" and I ate them alive.

She let a thin line of smoke escape her lips slowly. I watched it rise into the night air and dissipate into empty space. “Want a drag?” She was hardly the poster child of sex objects but I couldn't help but find myself attracted to her. She didn’t have the long, red fingernails or the crimson lipstick. She looked like something more chaotic. Her brown hair was wild and tangled. Her eye makeup was uneven. I hated smokers but I found myself staring at the way her head tilted back as she let out those long, deliberate exhales. She held the cigarette out towards me between her bitten down fingernails. “No thanks.”

This night is quiet beyond the sound of heavy wind picking up speed pulling along leaves that click and crash against the pavement before their weight is lifted upwards blowing in whimsical circles dancing in the gust I want to let that wind carry me away for just one moment to feel weightless in the air being carried along by something other than stained teeth biting my cuticles bloody I swallow the night the moon the stars the old flickering streetlamps into my veins lit up like small vessels the city, alive, roaring I become a part of it all of it and nothing at all.