KASET BF

You used to cry diamonds & bleed rubies.

I am plucking out my veins so that you might have a comfortable place to sleep, nestled along the curled edges of my skin. I cannot feel my way past the weight of you, cannot think past the needles & thread sensation of my bones, clicking together & stretching apart to accommodate. You are everywhere, taking over the most beautiful terrible parasite. Memories flow through my veins & drip from the tips of my fingers like water from a faucet. This can't be right, but it’s certainly not wrong. I don't care for fancy things, or take part in a precious race.

You're the cutest thing I've ever seen, like a teddy bear on heroin.

It's like when you were five, when your pet rabbit died & you learned that nothing good lasts. It's like the first time you saw your kindergarten teacher cry. It's like ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes. Ashes. It's like when he went too far, & he said, "Is this okay?" & you said, "No," But it didn't matter. It's like when you found out monsters weren't real but every night you still woke up screaming. I found my half in the forest of loves. Still in my heart this moment. Forget the reckless things we've done; can't replace what you gave me. Here I am, a rabbit-hearted girl.

If he breaks your heart, I'll break his face.

I bite my nails, you grow your hair, rebellion's such an hushed affair. Put a padlock on your mouth, bind your hands & completely wipe any stitch of yourself from ever existing. Be a droid & do as you are told. Colour yourself in any name you are called & blindly accept that you deserve every colour he paints you. I am too strong to be broken & too tough to be weakened. No more late-night calls or all day texts. No more sleeping over for days at a time - It has stopped & I miss it to death. I showed him I wasn't a dollop of clay he could mold to his liking & he couldn't take it. Time flies in warps, stripping from us, all we would want to hold onto, is the normality we spend a lifetime seeking. From where I am standing, the garden smells so much sweeter than a clump of dirt.

The little blue bird trapped in this forsaken cage.

The way you streak through my sky in shades of pink & indigo & some kind of blue ; you could strike & cease everything that is me. But for now you are the most beautiful kind of something, anything, everything. You are more like a late-afternoon comet & I'm using your lies & bad memories as rusty scissors. Every time you spoke a syllable, I felt my ears ready to bleed. There is truth in your blood, & it's staining your jeans. The truth is coming out. Against your will, it's finally hemorrhaging, & now you're going to bleed to death. A million band-aids couldn't heal that. No longer am I, trapped in my den.

For the first time in my eleven lives.

Your fingertips create little points of light everywhere they touch, leaving trails of stardust on my skin, in my hair. You're the best thing that ever happen to me, since coffee with cream. His throat is gone, your insides are out. Her brain is on the wall, I broke their hearts. The child is in a closet, quivering in fear. Standing here in my thrift store accessories. My three-dollar shoes & hand-me-down shirt. I'm a little nervous, a little insecure. There's nothing I can say you haven't already heard.

I am a puppet of tangled strings & broken masks.

Without your arms to hold me up, I am stumbling like a whiskey drunk, slipping on your every smile & breaking my knees on the memories. I am crying & I cannot understand why the audience is clapping, I hit my chin on the bottom of my heart & still the cheering swells. I cannot find the exit, cannot find my feet, cannot find the cogs & gears winding through my own damn head. Strings slipping through fat fingers so I am without support, trying to stand on feet that were made to go with legs than lean. I am not made of iron-spine & steel-resolve. I am cotton & denim, folding & bending whenever pressure is applied. I'm falling, crashing, becoming what I swore I wld never be. I'd burn all the strings to ash, but I'm terrified I couldn't, wouldn't stop the flames before I was consumed. I'm alone. Feel so jaded, contemplative.
You're such a fickle owner, I never amuse you for long. I wish you'd stop window shopping for a new & improved doll. Her pretty decaying gray eyes are far too innocent.