jerseylumber
pushpin paper doll,
my wedding dress tacked on at my clavicles and hips;
polished up from my toes to my lips;
bought out by someone's daddy's dowry check
and still nothing to write home about
except poetry that i thought i could grow to mean
pressed between pages like dead flowers
in a diary that i tossed out to sea.
sometimes i lie on my bed, upside-down, and let my hair course beyond the mattress, well down past where the sheets come off kilter and come to rest against the dingy seventies carpet in my second-floor apartment on the west end of town, and i think of what it would be like to be rescued, and i think of where we could end up, and i think i might be better off here, alone, listening to morrissey and not wearing any pants.
kings, face down--that's the worst card you could have pulled.
everything's a phone call away.
every one is guernica.
there are four little shining brown eyes peering out from under dirty blonde, too-long bangs that need a daddy more than i need a muse at midnight on a wednesday.
You pour your emotions like poison into the vents and it blows through the complex in a network of breezes. I'm not the cure you're looking for. I'm not the dream you thought you had.
I don't have anything for you, today. So many words and nowhere to put them.
My dad has patents on things I don't understand--
big pieces of metal folded into accordions, but they don't make any music.
He used to try to explain, but I think he got tired, and rightfully so.
I am proud of him, he is a better engineer than I can hope to be a writer.
Sometimes I miss how loud the stereo in his truck would turn on that daily drive,
all while we listened and sang along with songs I swore to my friends I hated.
I'd never slept like that before.
Just know you can't pin everything on what I wanted, boy--I never had the thought that limbs could stack like that, all poised for a fire. There were knee joints piled high, elbows and torsos and ankles and spines, bone settled and fused to bone under 200 thread count cotton. I couldn't help but worry then that maybe I wouldn't be able to feel my feet again, perhaps ever, but you were too peaceful, too beautiful with the grey too-early morning light against the too-harsh lines of your face for me to risk stirring the blood in them again.
I'd never slept like that before, not beside you, and I still haven't;
only counted how many times your lashes flutter through the things that you're dreaming and feeling a thousand little ants crawl between my toes.
Lead the brigade (the choice is yours).
Steal my card (it's broken anyway).
Redline battery (counting down percentages).
"Bulls on Parade" (been thinking of you lately).
Sleep away the uncertainty (and life begins anew).
Funny thing.
Tonight we talked about it, and I never thought much of it.
Never thought much of him, honestly.
Still don't, honestly.
Honestly.
But there's something about a couple of PBR and a couple of hours after midnight, talking about all the things in the world with sharp enough edges to cut--needles and scissors; lies and whole truths.
Forgive me if I've slighted you, my almost-friend.
Forgive me, for these sins won't ever seem to end.
Honestly.
Same time, same place--same hair, same shampoo. Same face, same eyes.
You're just...the same.
When I drove two hours or when I walked seven minutes, it doesn't matter. You always look, smell, feel the same.
When you took the time to think, "Hey, maybe I should kiss her," it would have been nice if the thought had carried through--
"What is she going to be like in the morning? "
"Will I feel the same?"
"Will she feel the same?"
or, most importantly...
"Will we be the same if one, the other, or both isn't true?"
But yes, if you're asking, you're the same and I'm the same, but we aren't..
We're different.
You're no Savior. My mistake.
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