P

Glancing across pictures of
who you are
who you were

Bits of me are still stuck to you,
an orange bandanna here,
a tie I once owned there,
blond hair stuck in my headbands
left for weeks on end at your house.

But you're just a
boy.
Not a man,
a boy,
and I know I forced you
to understand things
you've never wanted to
face.

With language as
obvious as her
tapping foot and
crossing her
sun-kissed arms
She felt sorry
for the way that people
look at her
in a melodramatic
petrified
state of mind
and see
confused
rather than enlightened
and

sick.

Sitting across the table from my younger brother, a tear drips quietly into the frozen dinner in front of me. I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm angry. I push the wide spaghetti noodles around in the bottom of the black, plastic bin. They look like white flatworms writhing in vaguely red vomit. I feel a bubble in my throat begin to rise and I choke it down. I sniffle. The boy looks up.
"Is it ok? I'll trade with you if you don't like it."
Oh, my sweet, sweet boy, if it were only that simple.
I roll my eyes in mock disgust, pulling back the tears racing to pour down my cheeks. "Yes, it's COMPLETELY disgusting." I take a small bite.
I'll regret it later.
I push the noodles around in the bottom of the bin obsessively, making sure no two noodles touch and none of them are obscured my sauce. I bite my lip, then put down my fork defiantly.
I look at the boy. He finished about five minutes ago. He's watching my charade, mystified.
"You should eat more."
I tell him I'm not hungry and that he should go to do his homework.
He leaves.
I clear the table.

He pokes his head around the corner of the living room door, after hearing the dish washer swing shut.
"Don't be sad. It's all gonna be ok"
I try to smile at him, lifting the corner of my mouth up so it seems more like a grimace than anything else. I tell him I have to pee.
He ducks back around the corner and I slink into the bathroom.
I turn the water on.
And I cry.

There was something comforting in the way
I at once
understood.
But:
there was something
sad
about the way I knew it was
the truth;
"I know your Father doesn't
Love me anymore."

Long before
she did.

Sometimes we want to be
anonymous
so badly
we don't even care that we've all

disappeared.

Walking down the simple pathways
leading echoes home to the
throat they came from
she realizes this is not
living.
The breeze, heavy with Spring's gentle scent
caresses her back
making her gasp in frustration,
wishing for the piercing bite of
pointed ivory icicles to grace her bare shoulders.
The soft cotton wisps blow through the air,
glancing slowly across her chest
catching her eyelids closed,
her lips sneering in a pained and menacing way,
wishing each tiny, feather-like bobble would strike her harshly,
pulling away her skin and
gripping tightly
sharply
to her flesh.
Her skin crawls with imaginary spiders
and itches with anger
and terror
as she pulls hair from her head
one strand at a time.
It hurts more to stay safe than it does to
give up
give in.

She wanders down the road
with winding pathways
treading the delicate line between
insane,
sorry,
and

fine.

I'm not sure the slur was
really all that I meant it to be,
dripping thickly,
sticky sweet
into your ear,
laughing with the moonlight and the
crowd of people standing below the
balcony.
Being pushed over it wasn't
half bad
and I half hoped
the colour of my hair
the taste of my lips
the easy little flits of my
lazy lashes
would remain in your dreams
forever.
I guess in a few ways they did
but then again
I'm usually wrong.

She watches her figure
break the filmy glass,
throwing her pale
bony
skeleton
against her eyes.
Her hips slide around in
empty skin
as she walks toward the wall,
her naked thighs glistening with
mist from the shower.
Her hair is wet,
lopsided with straggly bits
hanging further to the left.
Her piercings glitter with
diamond pain and
shallow infections,
throbbing as she
sneers at her picture visage,
like Alice in a fight with the
Looking Glass.
Her teeth are sharpened pearls.
Her eyes are swollen sapphires lined with
amethyst and ruby skin.
She's tired and she can smell the bitter smoke of the day
against her lily skin.
She watches her figure
against the filmy grain of the
camera
and knows she's once and for all
A ghost.

She likes to watch her life in
backwards motion,
her tongue reshaping words
and letters
and rhymes that she's not sure
ever meant anything at all.
It almost seems like
falling asleep,
watching her eyes open day after day,
watching the minute tick back from
59
on her analog clock.
She's almost afraid to let it go again,
bouncing back
from time to time
letting reality seep into her veins
and suddenly
fast-forwarding
to
Now.

The young French girl,
a Parisian with a twist,
sits close to the sunset,
her fingers clasped around ruined plans
and memories she no longer wishes to
keep.

She's got a lot to
think about, you know,
with her stories making
imaginary headlines
of
"Drunken Father Takes New Wife"
"Boyfriend Claims Girl is Not Physically Attractive"
"Brother Can't Read, but is Fourteen"
"College Tuition is Twice Income Amount of Household"

She's not that
happy,
you know,
writing riddles on her
thighs.

She's just
completely
lost perspective.

Peeking out from behind pages of books,
my past flutters before my
eyes,
opening conversations and
essay topics
for people to study.
It lingers in my
mind,
pulling paint and tape and
posters
off the walls of my room,
showing me how
bare
how naked
how simple
life really should be.
Post-it notes covered in
scrawled vines of
poetry and sarcasm
blanket the bed I sleep upon,
a quilt of love-hate and
everything in between.
I want to breathe
"I'm sorry"
into the lungs of the world
and stay there,
safe,
while she grows around me,
until
I can find
your truth.

I am the girl with a
fake tan peeking from her
teal dress,
her Marylin Monroe blond hair dripping
"fake"
into her morning tea and coffee.

I am the girl in Boho fashions,
playing electric chords on
acoustic guitars
and singing with a voice like
feathers and flowers blooming.

I am the girl who loves too much,
who's heart is broken every morning
when the sun doesn't rise on time
or the bus driver
forgets
to say hello.

I am the girl
the boy
the in-between who watches in awe
as others flaunt their
pure sexuality
with bowler caps and
tiara's gracing their brows.

I am the wind
I am the sea
I am unforgettable.
I am...
anonymous.