overlook

Let's trade off. You would attempt to pick locks with my discarded bobby pins and I would fracture the door with an axe. We could pretend Wendy was the real killer in The Shining and I'd come at it from her angle (such angles! brunette, eyes a little too big for her face, other worldliness that shouldn't quite work, but goodness, it does for you). Except I wouldn't bludgeon you with it (or croquet mallets, for that matter), you'd just get crushed by your own inability to focus on anything else. Instead you'd write the same sentence over and over again on my tongue. All play and no work when Wendy emerges from under your writing desk, announcing her presence by way of teeth. Your typewriter topples and discarded alphabet letters clang in reverse, writing senseless poetry. I wonder what beauty the ribbon spelled out on accident when the machine hit the floor, reams of paper upset into their own blizzard. In place of mad key strokes, the marks of your intentions and the imprints of your imagination would bloom in purple and blue ink on the blank sheet of pale skin right in the places you want to see your thoughts appear, sliding the page to the indentions where you want to start whole paragraphs, repeating the idea indefinitely, ending with purposeful, sometimes prayerful punctuations.

She wouldn't be so easy to read, hiding keys (the one to the haunted room and typewriter keys.. where the fuck did my L go? You can't even start your sentence without it) and walking backwards through snowy labyrinths, kicking the fresh fall over her own dead giveaways. You'd only be allowed to enter that room when she dropped the chain into your palm that said No. 237, and spend your time confused by patterns in the shifting carpeting blocking you in, the print you push her face into suddenly turning inwards and enveloping you in parentheses as you slowly lose it, snowbound prisoner, to a fever that has nothing at all to do with cabins, but hallways you get turned around in and maybe more than a little bit of blood.

weiße hexe

I can't wait for it to snow.

I can't wait to confuse white ground with horizon, red cheeked and dizzy under dead branches whispering boreal spells that Spring, crouching in wait and listening, later crying rain and cursing thunder, possesses zero hope to decipher. To regard night sky reflecting snow with the eerie reflective glow of perpetual teasing dark a dying sun would torture a codependent planet with while the tenants scurried to think up some other source of warmth, planning virgin space flights, forced to the brink. A sky more like purple graveyard haze than any cemetery on the Eve of All Saints in history. A sky confusing the pineal glands of poets. Cold lit expanse and a language few speak, winter scarring with its big empty, assuring no one leaves their houses so you can stand in the middle of the street, reclaiming it from cars that would on any other day swerve to avoid greeting you. You can pretend it's the apocalypse while your ears get filled with the ice age.

Exactly the quiet i'm always chasing.

all ears

Everything that she speaks comes out jewels and flowers. Keep fucking talking, I say. Her eyes grow wide at the profanity. We giggle as she recites prose and rubies clatter into corners, utters nonsense that turn into pearls. Tries her tongue at french and awkwardly annunciates diamonds. Recipe cards turn into violets. Passages from the classics into roses, articles of erotica into orchids, beatnik poetry into daisies, spell book selections become black poppies. She giggles gardenias, laughs until she cries chrysanthemums. I lay at her feet and roll in riches, sit up and amethysts and opals come unstuck from my skin, rolling under the couch.

"But it's a curse!" she exclaims, and that sets off fresh rounds of laughter and falling percussive treasure punctuated by hyacinth hiccups and crystal clears of the throat.

"It could be worse," I whisper, and snakes slither from the nest of my chest.

beneath the habit

Show me on the doll where the Spirit touched you.

the curse of bubblegum betty

we meet outside the cemetery gates. we're wearing knee socks and mary janes. she's blowing pink bubbles and smells like strawberries, a headband perched on the haircut i want and can't pull off. mine's a short pixie cut, the only choice that works with my angular facial structure and sharp features. her long hair frames her pleasant face and her curves, the swells under her sweater speaking of inviting softness and shaming the crooked inhospitable landscape hidden by my own clothes, what i call the warpath. teenage boys think about touching her. (she, she, she, she) she's a bombshell. i like to look under rocks and would rather not talk if that's okay, unless i have something to say. i feel like daphne and velma standing here about to chase ghosts. guess which is which. except instead of black glasses my eyes are circled with black eyeliner, a failed attempt at her perfect and practiced wing. that's me, always attempting the exterior feminine arts, always getting it wrong. she has her areas of knowledge, and i have mine.

 "it's back there." i say, and point to an area obscured by trees. "swell." she snaps a sweet wad of pink between her teeth. is anything about her not bursting to meet you? she's easy, even in her vocabulary. round and airy like the bubbles she blows. she's so nice, and that makes everything worse somehow.

we weave through headstones and she spots what i want to show her. the weird stinking, sinking plot in the very back in an area that seems to be ten degrees colder than the rest of the place, surrounded by strange ironwork; symbols that look satanic.
"cool," she breathes. she's attracted to danger. i stand back and she walks around the edge, tempting the mud to give whatever creature sleeps under this strange, raw patch of earth a chance to grab her curvy little ankle and descend with her to the claustrophobia of the rotting wood closet of a coffin below.

she's been wearing crystals under her little ironed peter pan collared shirts and sweater sets lately. messing around with ouija boards. aligning herself with darkness. being in school with her since kindergarten, i've known her long enough to know that this is a phase, like her fascination with horses in fourth grade. too bad they don't make satanic sticker books. this is why i brought her here, and she's taking it in just like i knew she would. i just bet she's taking notes to tell her friends, who have deemed darkness cool since she seems to think it is. the friends she giggles with while their manicured hands with teeny upside down crosses markered on in class make the planchette glide at their slumber parties. i'm almost 100% positive she's thinking about it now, thinking about bringing them here, maybe without telling them about it first; about the congratulations she'll get for knowing about this strange and secret place.

her eyes are wide with wonder, the eyes that have always seemed to me to be somehow too literal. she's staring, transfixed, at the grave dirt. the displaced earth that doesn't fit the age of the headstone and surrounding decorations, the sift that looks in its discrepancy as if the grave is either fresh, or something underneath has shifted.
"what's that smell?" her nose wrinkles as she steps back delicately, a child afraid of sullying her sunday school shoes.
 "i don't know. graveyards aren't supposed to smell bad, or no one would ever come visit their poor dead grandmothers."
 "you're disturbed," she scoffed at me, feigning disgust. as if i'm not used to it, watching her across a sea of scrubbed faces in the cafeteria, thinking of what would happen if i approached her table and addressed her in public as we're speaking now; not the way this nancy drew adventure was set underway, i assure you; this flashlight cemetery mystery. this meeting was a nab of the elbow, a drag behind a brick column at the cheery yellow bus departure (never so cheery for me, drowning in a sea of other people's connections, always taking my own bus home) where she would listen to what i had to say without being distracted by the looks we were getting, without the need to escape association with that weird girl who dines alone with a book for company- to dart wonderings, dodge questions. even then, secreted away, she looked about nervously and had a hard time focusing on what i was telling her regarding this X on the map we stand at now, and it took me two or three tries to hook her interest enough to meet me here. two or three stabs with a pin to capture the shivering moth of her morbid curiosity. i heard somewhere that moths are attracted to the light that eventually kills them because they know that somewhere in the field of light there is complete darkness, and that's really what they crave, but get so blinded by the light that they never find the oblivion they're chasing.

i nibble on a fingernail in response, just as i would a pear, the crust of a sandwich from a paper bag in that cafeteria, recalling lengthy looks (lengthy both because of time and distance) i used to permit back when i cared. that was a long time ago.

it's flirting with her, this scene in front of us. i watch it arrest her by the eyes as now the curious child forgets all about messing her shoes, taking careful and ladylike steps forward, her dress shifting prettily about her thighs, the fabric falling from her hips with that same seemingly planned but surely accidental femininely lovely exactness of each lock of hair set against the other, or offset, as each one your eyes fell on seemed to be complimented and made even more beautiful by the last. and each step forward she took, i crept a silent step backwards, disappearing into shadows not of the variety that she now faces, my fingers twisting the pixies in front of my ears, perhaps absentmindedly searching for something to hold on to during the show in lieu of a bucket of popcorn. after all, why should i interfere with this schoolgirl crush? who am i to get between a girl seeking a razor's edge, an inviting precipice, a girl mouthing gimme danger with her throat bared? i'm sure she's sweating a little under that pressed collar, even with the chill from the cold, warmed from heat in secret places, growing fascination and desire drawing her closer.

come to me, little stranger. it beckons with eerie light and irresistible mystery, of lessons you won't find in your hand-me-down high school textbooks, even your dog eared "esoterica for beginners" stash you secret away in the drawers your mom doesn't fill with the clothes that won't wrinkle. i fully excuse myself from the scene unfolding to peer from behind a gnarled tree. the perfect graveyard accessory. one she'd take black and white pictures of to bookmark her heart-locked diary of amateur hexes. i watch the initial embrace, its flattering shiver of anticipation that tremored the ground as she approached. the surrender, the enfold, the bliss of each, this symbiotic relationship. the maw. the tongue, a carnivorous flower, her giggle as she believed herself as beautiful. then i watched her align, sinkronize with the mach band. and i turned and walked away, but not before she surrendered all cult-eyed, becoming not the educated and adored lover she'd hoped, but prey; her girlish delicacy utterly dismissed, fluttering discarded in an unmarked grave.

order

I ingested something from the spaceship. I don't remember if it was fed to me or if I took it voluntarily. But I remember that it may or may not have been a flower, or their food version of what a flower would look and taste like where I come from. Perhaps a better tasting replica, bitter but punching irresistible tart sweetness, just daring me not to devour. Or maybe plucked from some sacred space of an extraterrestrial landscape where the colors were all off. It may or may not have been blue. I may or may not have crouched in a corner, or what passes for a corner in their sleek white ship. Pretending to be in a corner, turned toward a wall, curling inward, pivoting myself invisible.

I do remember that- acting as if no one could spot me in the middle (or beginning, or end-- everything in this craft goes in circles) of the room. But they saw me licking it curiously, a child hoarding a candy prize under the dinner table with eyes blacker than they should be, pupils saucer sized, and kept moving forward on their own business in their otherworldly way, ignoring me as if I were playing an immature game. I watched shadow strides of the adults, or creatures bigger than me, not quite walking but slinking, one silhouette after another marching intermittently, then closer together until each became indistinguishable from the next. I made flowers of my own hands, my fingers inward turning blooms that could unfold this specimen of beautiful sustenance, and I did, I think, gaze at it for some time, or maybe even at fields of them after I ingested it, after I'd shredded its delicacy with my canines, a wolf teasing a bloom from earth after the frost melts, curiouser and curiouser. Made messes of its petals with my molars, finally grinding that impossible blue into its own starry oblivion after grazing it on my lips and tearing at it tentatively until I couldn't wait anymore, staining my tongue the color of frozen slushees or summer skies looking up from under bleachers, each taste bursting of a memory until they all combined and I was consuming my own life. The sex of the flower, the middle, I turned inside out, staring curious and imagining its outrage as I bared it and dared to touch my tongue on what was probably the rawest nerve, pushing it back and forth, exploring sweet, salty, sour and bitter in maddeningly slow tastes, stretching what was left of it to the breaking point until it exploded and 90's arcade color assaulted the backs of my eyelids. This probably isn't right. Surreal bliss then, a sudden memory of when I was three and used to slip a barbie doll's head on my finger under my sheets those hot nights when I fought with slumber. Stroke me to sleep with your pink lipped smile and those white teeth that can't bite. Keep your eyes open the whole time. Bury your face in this alien place, here in the dark and quiet. I'll writhe without sound and I know you can't tell anyone. I don't even know what I'm doing except that it's reserved for the dark and it makes my head explode like a dying star. I don't know why I involve you except that you happily keep my secrets and I like the way your face feels when I rub it in my privacy. My head tingles the same way now and I can't quite get my breath back, my legs askew like a junkie.

One of the tall ones peers into my face. I laugh and colors stain its blank face, and it backs away. I'm giggling prisms, making a mess of their walls. My fingers are stained an impossible holographic hue. Maybe I look like a deranged back alley paint huffer and this makes me laugh even harder. Maybe they'll take my picture to remind me later when I regain control of my complete lack of order. What childishness. But it doesn't make any difference because the place is being overrun with black palm trees and they're lost in the fronds, becoming more and more distant and unreal. They scold me from afar but I can only see neon rainbow streaky sky. She appears white against all of this color noise with the shiny, impossibly large eyes of a lycanthrope and kneels while I gasp at her very existence, wondering momentarily if I should kneel myself. Saint Android, patron of the hurtle, of uncharted galaxies. But she yanks my legs into a more sensible arrangement, retaining that painted but now coy smile commanding surrender. Plastic but ethereal, I wonder where her model numbers are or if they are a smattering of arcane symbols. Maybe she'll spill her code when her lids tip, those luminous orbs of oracle darkened by her own lapses, or I'll find answers between every eyelash, decipher the patterns of blush response that stray from her programming. I grab her hair and pull hard, my fingers pushing into her, doll to please me, and careening through space, finally smear her lipstick.

((flowers))

((empathy test))

snapshot from august

O Rose thou art sick.