highway 90 (mansfield pt. 2)

2 AM
and cherry brake lights you follow
hide in layers of white spectral haze
a foretelling of the next ground
you'll stand on
negotiate it, driver, and punch it
when you saw it flash danger too late
did broken light shear through your fingers
in flickering bands?
did you have time to fling your own
curse?
heart, a violent and sudden strawberry ghost
filters a cracked lollipop collide-a-scope
bitter candy shards splinter
twisted metal becoming a cupid's bow
that aims and lets you go

tumbling upwards past the shatter,
alice through the windshield glass
you became so much poetry that it took off
with the top of your head
spilling five languages and
numbers having nothing to do with
the tailor's tape or the bank roll
singing blue silver, singing better than you
a song of swift ribbons

"a spray of stars hit the screen", sweet jayne
mocking your collection of bruises
and even still the moon settles into those boasting
curves, tonight it's only interested in
those of your sclera
shining through your half open windows
beaming at you in the gravel
of one belonging to a dead man
whose coroner's modest cover finally exposed
only a little black boot
a striptease in reverse

it's too late to retract this hex
or crawl out of your problems and into
a dress
and slip into pink and a drink
no matter now how many
coats of fresh paint are
layered on the walls of your palace
that garish haunty hue still seeps through

first memory

first, the razor
a rite of passage
cut into my memory
fitting because its purpose was 
to give me shape
whisper that secret
my sisters hide behind closed doors
give me white lace not sewn as trim
on dresses for little dolls
i heard the cost is
some amount of blood

i know blood attracts teeth
and i get pinches on my cheeks

so i imitate those strokes
i'd glimpsed that smoothed their legs
and christ, did my shins spill scarlet
next to the cabinet of female curiosities
creating red polka dotted
snow white linoleum sharp
against the black grout i was
making fairy tales

she, wide hipped, sundressed,
laughing from the hall
her smile demoting me again to doll
silly girl, we'll need
a whole box of bandaids
crouching eye level to question
hum and staunch
and take the blade from my
chubby hand
eyes unreadable behind the giant
rose colored lenses of the decade

i don't know why, iris.
i blink and bleed
through the bandages

haunted.

this time i did make it to the graveyard. bound in belts, that buckle tightened to the highest notch, that pull of capture singing its own strain of hallelujah as my fingers numbed with an overflow of blood, pushed to the point of escape, purple reading as black in the moonlight. you killed me wearing a bracelet fashioned from my panties (what the hell fun is rape when there’s no layers to make work of?) that you were unaware of until it dropped to your forearm, rapt as it was around your bicep rambo style. fitting, since you wielded a knife as you collected souvenirs of battle, cutting straps away with the discipline of a warrior. that purposeful face trained with untold lengths of time planning, that countenance reflecting that one chromosome you are away from destroyer. oh, but you destroyed me. i’ll never be the same. my permanent limp displaying unapologetically as i make my way through the gates with a nethercat winding around my mud hemmed ankles to warm them, threatening to trip me as i clamber to find you. the one that came when it heard me scratching at the earth to be let out. cats understand wanting always to be on the other side of a closed door.

holding the duct tape i wore, making it kiss your face with the glue that eclipsed my entire mouth, still wet from smothered screams. i track you through the window as you try to absorb your carefully catalogued collection through your senses, a smell here, a taste there. a bite. you wipe the sweat of your fever with fragmented fabric. scraps of the girl i was you cut, you tore, you kept. i’d leave ghosts of my breath on your pane if i had any, heart and lungs stilled forever under your expert hand, those teeth that did more than graze. trying to dig a tunnel to the center of me, pushing, digging until you fancied you’d  grasp your own hands on the other side, that need to burrow all the way through. crazy to claim the core, like an instinctive run to home base chased by your own desire.

tag, you’re it. once upon a time we collapsed dizzy with that chase. now i’m after you but no one’s laughing. i crawled out of the oubliette you laid me in somewhat less than lovingly, brought back with that rage indistinguishable from desire. to keep you with me always, forever and past our inscribed assigned tombstones, mud and root tangles, yawning pits of earth. just another rabbithole. my fingernails, caked with the grave, play murder ballads on the glass unheard over your current focus on my charms. i watch you breathe in layers that were closest to me when you ground the smell of my own confused longing into each thread of the fabric with a hand that practiced on your assured own for months prior, praying and plotting, then playing and prodding. i see you whispering new litanies, worshipping the material confines of that particular prize threatening to disintegrate as you stretch it to its limits as you did my flesh, the means to a release from that tangible trap.

now i’m back, and i’m taking you to the grave. your lady in white pitching in peculiar patterns across your lawn, itching to find an opening to get to you, and rap rap rapping at your chamber door. the all familiar call silenced by a slip of the lock, a swing of rusty hinges creaking on tracks like the inner map that brought me back, lips bruised blue by oxygen neglect, body twisted with misuse, a discarded ragdoll that came back to play. you reach out and pluck dead autumn leaves from my hair, lick your fingertip and wipe away dirt from my cheek, realize that this time the dried blood tunnels too deep to spit clean being that it belongs to me. and so do you. i stare out stern from a face you dared attempt to bury, close the door behind me and shove your face in what you’ve done.