Lady Luck

There is a woman made of porcelain, her hair, strung together with gold, braided with copper. She comes to sit, to remove burden from her delicate body, and rest. She crosses her ankles over one another, and casts her inner daily demons away within one prolonged sigh. She has lines in her face, too deep to reverse with any cream, or collagen. She reaches into her bottomless purse, pulls out a cigarette box marked "lights", and lights. With her first inhale, she closes her eyes, and lets the sun warm her housed skin. To the left of her, there are 4 children marching in lines, chewing bubble gum with every one of their tiny teeth. Among the four children, there are three boys and one little girl. The little girl marches daintily, cautiously placing her feet into dirt and mud, worrying that her mother will scold her for scuffing up her new school shoes. She is wearing a pink dress, fresh with morning creases. The three boys are certainly not in love with her, but one of the three boys secretly loves the color pink. He accidentally favors her, he doesn't rush her strange shoe checking routine. Not that he doesn't want to march as fast as the other boys, he's just too transfixed on the moving pink blob in front of him to remember girls have cooties. Out loud, one of the boys, the red haired boy, curses the mud for taking to his feet like quicksand. He quickly decides that the marching game will be a short-lived trade and marches all the way back to the playground. The third boy, a tall, awkward, and strange boy, moves his head side to side with every corresponding footstep he takes. He picks at his head, due to the infestation of lice dwelling within his jungle hair. Sometimes he gets lucky, finds a bug and squeezes its guts out between his pointer finger, and his thumb. There is a slight moment of his satisfaction, then a dull realization of shame. The doll woman, still sitting down, breathing slowly and seriously, notices a ladybug has landed on one of the children. Then, just as slowly as she sat, she stands, walking over to remove the bug from the pink collar of the little girl. The little girl, still dedicated to keeping her shoes clean, doesn't notice the woman at all. In fact, she was completely startled by the womans shadow, and only noticed it because she suddenly felt submerged in darkness. While the woman went to pluck the ladybug from the girls dress, the little girl reached for the womans hand, and pushed it away. The woman was alarmed by the rudeness of such a young child, and rolled her eyes. But children are much more observant than adults when it comes to the little things. The little girl looked up at the woman, shielded her face from the sun now shining down on her blonde curls. The girl frowned at the woman and said "Don't you know that it's good luck for one of these to land on you?" The woman, jaded by her days work, her sore feet, and her headache, chuckled slowly and said "I hardly believe in luck anymore". The little girl, who had started to twirl in circles, stopped dead in her tracks upon hearing such terrible news. She then cupped the ladybug in her tiny hands, looked at it, closely, like the bug was a long lost friend, then set it on the womans shoulder. After the two exchanged glances, the little girl looked down at her feet and asked if the woman would like to play in the mud. The woman, still staring at the ladybug inching up her arm, thought for a second, then agreed. She took a few steps until the girl told her to take off her shoes first. "My mom hates mud in my shoes, doesn't yours?" The woman smiled, and slid her feet out of her heels, felt the ground beneath her, closed her eyes, and thanked the ladybug for reminding her what it was like to be alive. "How lucky." She said, and stepped toe first into the mud.

He loved me, years ago.

I tried to take my life,
in my mothers bed.
I laid in the sage green blanket,
and closed my eyes,
I fell asleep,
picturing her arms wrapped around me.
I slept so soundly,
it was finally over,
all moments silenced,
all regrets
were pasted upside down,
and erased.
until she arrived home.
When she saw me,
lying in her bed,
she crawled next to me,
and stroked my hair.
this I remember,
because it was the stroke
which brought me back to life.
I opened my eyes,
and thought I was staring into my own,
but it was just her,
looking into mine,
until she realized,
something was not right with her baby.
She screamed,
and lifted me from the bed,
I closed my eyes,
because I knew I was safe.
Safe from myself,
safe from him,
and all reasons to become overwhelmed.
I hear clouded sounds,
and see nothing.
Just the feel of cold water striking my face.
Just the pleas to god,
just the phone call to poison control.
the phone call to my brother,
the cries of my uncle,
the rage of my mother.
The feel of her hand bruising my face.
The tilt of my brain as I fell back into nothing.
The flowers that blossomed and consumed my brain
like jade ivy,
weaving its way in and out of my body.
In the arms of my mother,
I rested my hand against her cheek,
I aked for my grandmother,
but she had passed years ago.
My mother asked for me to hold on,
but I had passed years ago.
When I finally arrived
at destination nothingness,
I felt my body clam up,
my brain hault,
and for once it was beautiful to not remember.
it was a sunset in a hallow life.
it reminded me how it felt,
to have a whole heart.
And when I awoke the next morning.
To the eyes of my family,
I cursed their names
for ever letting me return.

There is no sunshine
in a sealed mind.
So maybe,
if I close my eyes real tight,
the light will vanish,
and leave my pale skin be.
I want to be everything you leave behind,
I want this drive you take,
to be the last time you think about me.
Because I can't stand the feeling of burning ears
I don't want to know you're whispering my name somewhere.
Let go of my name,
and let go of my heart,
I simply cannot bare to house you here anymore.
I don't want you touching my dreams,
I don't want you intruding in the peace I will surely find.
I feel helpless,
I feel miserable,
Then I feel nothing at all.
I want to cleanse myself of you,
Peel away my skin,
because at one point, you loved it so.
I want to see you on the street,
and recognize nothing.
I want to hear your name,
and think of some actor,
but never you.
Never you,
never you.
Never.

Windows

She was so...
Unnatural.
I watched her hair break off in clumps,
while she fell to her plastic knees.
She held onto her strands
left handed,
she softly touched it to her face.
I never knew a hurricane could break,
that's what she was,
a hurricane of a woman.
I stood over her,
a building in her eyes,
and buried her with songs.
She screamed at the top of her lungs,
but the sounds were muffled
by the own capabilities of her throat.
I heard the blood break through,
like a dammed up river,
and explode through her eyes.
When we met,
her eyes were pastel blue,
gorgeous with fear,
ripe with any chance of love.
She would press her lips against windows,
to heal the cracks within the skin.
She told me the cold felt good
in contrast to the pain.
I always noticed her teeth
because they were always biting her cheeks
and her cheeks were already so sunken in,
that the pull of her skin
made her look edgy, like a model.
In the morning,
she'd break glass around the house,
and while I'd sweep,
She'd walk across the pile of broken edges
In her bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee,
her blonde hair,
messy, and piled upon the crown of her head.
I could hear the glass piercing her skin,
breaking through the many layers of her.
She'd throw her head back,
and I could hear her breathing,
her smile would sharpen around the edges,
and under her breath she'd say her own name.
She was turned on by her demise.
I recall a moment,
when she wasn't so strange,
but still stranger than me.
She collapsed her legs at the top of a hill,
dressed in white,
with dirt in her fingernails,
with grass pressed firmly into her skin.
Holding onto a daffodil,
Keeping her eyes North,
She spoke quitely,
Yet I couldn't help but feel the ground shake with every word.
I asked her why she would bother praying now.
After all the self loathing,
self mutilation, and hate.
Her organic eyes,
the only thing still remaining pure
on her tired, ruined face.
Locked onto mine,
and for a moment,
I saw God.
And he was just as starved,
just as bitter,
just as pain seeking,
just as angry as her.

Seashells in all I do,
they lay at my feet,
the dramatic swirls,
the patterns thrown onto solid,
they consume my feet,

drown me at first tide.

I suppose I'm terrified to lay down,
where will I go if I sink?
But that's the risk I take
falling asleep by the ocean,
maybe I deserve that watery fate.
Maybe I deserved the crown
Like an oceanic queen,
gone mad.
I'm hoping
in my misery,
the sea will still have me.

time to pretend

I don't notice the winters sting
while I'm sitting on the cliffs of seasons past,
I don't recognize remorse
(not within myself at least)
I am watching this smoke
consume the clarity of todays air.
I shouldn't do this,
and I shouldn't do that.
But here I am, dying a day at a time-
giving a shit less about how fast it comes.
and while everything I used to know
remains teetering on the edge of this rock,
I am inventing new reasons to pretend I'm someone else.
I am convinced I am the peoples tether ball,
making my rounds,
and always returning to their fist.
I know how hard they hit,
and yet I continue to orbit on back.
how lonely is my life, hanging from a string?
At least I am incapable of falling,
(but completely capable of snapping.)
in their eyes,
I am a perfect sport.
But I don't notice much,
as a heat whore,
(Such am I)
it becomes more than easy to ignore red flags.
I simply need the heat to thrive.
I need to be hated,
to continue.
And now,
as I rise to my feet,
it's time to pretend I know nothing I've ever felt,
tie my knots tighter than before,
and swing.

It's raining

I fell asleep
next to my first love
for the first time.
He called me a cab,
because it was raining.
and impatiently waiting, in my pajamas,
I told the driver
It had been years.
My heart regresses to a smaller time,
when I knew nothing
about anything
but everything about him.
My body stayed strong,
While my mind wandered into oblivion.
holding him against my chest,
Because I needed to know
his heart was by mine again.
And even if it was just for a minute,
we were in love again.
When his lips
pressed against mine
a sigh of all sighs passed throughout me.
and I can't quite remember
if I even knew my name at the moment.
And when I think back,
I remember the taste of the rain,
but before I remember the taste of water,
I remember the taste of him.

So it's always been.

I hid my eyes from him,
in fear of him remembering I am not the one.
In fear of eternal loneliness after a glimpse of light.
In moments of weakness,
I held onto his shoulders,
and I felt the freckles on my chest
align, and combust.
Because with him,
everything within me,
is dying to be a part of him.
And I don't blame the feeling.
I blame him,
for being absolute comfort,
for being home of all homes,
for being a beautiful soul.
I remember being 14,
begging for a night with him,
just so I could know how it felt
to sleep soundly,
to know sleep at all.
But I find myself,
a woman now,
consumed with his energy,
and more awake than I've ever been.
When I look into his eyes,
I know I have seen beautiful things,
because I recall them instantly.
The way fog makes my skin feel,
the way sun melts fog,
the way the moon strikes down the sun,
and how beautiful life has always been.
How beautiful it appears
while he's gracing my skin
with the edge of his identity on the tip of his finger.
While he traces lace patterns on my naked back
of the wedding dress I had imagined myself
marrying him in.
as he kisses my stomach,
like I'm his first love.
In all the movement,
and in all the security of his touch,
I lay awake remembering the flowers
the flowers he sent me
when I was a girl.
And I know he sees me as her,
still young, still so young.
And I felt myself grabbing him tighter,
so he could feel me.
my hips
my breasts
my skin.
I am aged,
and I know
I know what I've done.
and I don't want to leave,
ever again.

but here he is,
I know every part by touch,

he is memorized by me,
I have memorized him,
like a verse you recite-
to keep you happy,
to keep you sane
to keep you breathing
to keep you loving
to keep you trying
he is-
remembered entirely,

-beautiful as always.
and it is raining.