There is earth in your teeth. Lighter in palm. There is running. You wipe your brow and swallow gravel. Again. A brush past through hallway corridors. Sweet copper lines down your chin. They call you Red. They do not have eyes.
Flipping through magazine pages. Cut. Strands of silk fall through the paper. Into your hands. The eyes of a cat, one nose from a woman advertising her cheeks. Or her lips. Or the gloss coating them. You cannot tell.
Schoolbooks beat like butterfly wings against your ribcage. Everything painted in blue. So much blue it burns. There is a clap of lighting outside and it does not startle you. You present a poster with glitter glue and Ronald Regan facts. The glitter melts on your tongue.
People taste how empty feels.
You are saturated. You are the crater on the dirt where the sea used to be. Someone has eaten the ocean.
A mother washes dishes. A dancer’s grace (fallen down). The windowsill light casts halos above her brow. You rock back and forth, forth and back on the bathroom floor when she sleeps. You pull the word “afraid” from your throat as you shake. It comes tumbling out like string. The walls crumble like cardboard houses. It all feels terribly real.
A broken bottle slices your tongue when you blink. One, two, three. Blink-black brittle-bloody-dropping-down-again- again.
The mirror by your bed has hands. Clinging to the corners, stretching the edges so you fit between. You are too whole. You bite off a piece of arm, a tear of skin around the ears. You stick it to your bedroom wall. It slides down to the carpet within the week. The dust mites piece you back together. Stiches snug.
This brain tugs taut as needle and thread. Another whisper of smoke. Cigarette kiss. Welcome in the hurt the way you pray. Be silent when you scream. Cry. Eyeballs freeze with winter weather. Slit your body through. Bleed out on the hardwood floors. The stains. They call you Red.
They do not have eyes.
You say you love her. Spit it out.
The glass between our faces will break one day. You keep tapping.
Tiptoe over trauma and bury dog bones. Visit once a day. Stop visiting when it snows. What about promises? Perception. Prove a point. Be mindful to be forgetful. You cannot find a good song to fit this. No emotion. Black hole looming and crunch-
the bones are broken now.
Include you. Include you. Need you. No one needs this. Vanilla smile and warm milk. Sickness is a state of mind.
You sleep below a motel bed. The world is shuddering. Holy is a brutal word.
No one can make you say it. No one can make you do anything. You read a Bible once; you could’ve done better. No matter. When the air congeals, when the birds fall dead mid- flight, they will know.
They will all know one day.
What a terrifying thought.
We meet beneath streetlights. They break our bodies orange. I kill my fears by kissing them upon your palms. You share secrets. Ears are disintegrating. Your knuckles protrude. Angel- white.
The sun stopped working today. We tried shaking it, you put it in rice. Nothing changed. Not even a flicker.
You stay miserable and underneath wet blankets.
You feel heavy. Heavy feels alone.
when i read things like this it makes me very envious of the mind you have to have to come up with this sort of writing. it all blends together, while at the same time being so drastically different that it keeps the reader interested. Great job!
I’m obsessed with how you write, how you take simple acts and change them with words so that they become inherently beautiful. Every week, I look forward to reading your pieces because they are so “you”. Each thing you write is obviously different, theme-wise and content-wise, but somehow, they all fit together like little, abstract puzzle pieces that strike me as something you’ve written. Thank you for sharing this with us, and for your works to come:)
i absolutely love the abstraction of this piece, and i love how solemn and sorrowful everything feels.
I’ve read this multiple times and boy, do I love it. I might not understand it, but I enjoy your word choice so much. Some of it may seem random, but you tie in phrases that then make you question, “Well, maybe not.” I don’t know. I just really like your writing and this piece specifically. Good job!
You reading this at coffee house and you then me reading this here makes the experience even better!!! I love this. “Include you. Include you. Need you. No one needs this.” Is my absolute favorite line and I hope you include this in your senior showcase