darbi-howeWhisper

American

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The Milkman and The MirrorIt's a sweltering night, a sweltering morning really, and my body is tattooed with spider bite kisses and bruises. I smell of park grass and chlorine and someone else's sweat, my lips are chapped, swollen, my eyes encircled in crimson undertones. The people on the street stare- I am blonde, a dead give away, slighter and taller than the locals. Men are confused, women are scornful, police are helpless. My legs cramp with the dawn as I walk back to the apartment in my hospital-gown green tunic, sobbing openly, hair tangled with twigs and dirt. It's still dark enough for that, but too quiet. A milkman stops his work to look up at me and whisper *ciao* in the most kind and gentle voice I have ever heard, especially here, and I want to throw myself into his arms and sleep and scar his white uniform with the black stains of my tears, though I restrain myself and nod, shuffling forward, shoulders slumped, no eye contact, his gaze a hand stroking my back like the father I never had but always wished for, and I cannot help but cry harder, though I try harder to restrict each sob until I sound as though I'm gasping for air, but I would rather seem asthmatic than week, rather be strange than pitiful. It is always better to be unknowable, much more simple than openly vulnerable in my experience, though my experiences are drunken from the bottom dredges of a half empty glass, so truly I do not know if this is *true*, and and every day I understand Hamlet's letter to Ophelia just a bit more, because every day I doubt truth to be a liar just a bit more. / Still, there are some things I know, enough to be called *intelligente* by a man named Simone, whose eyes shone with *solare* during the day, but at night became dark and hungry. I know now why my friend chose to fly off a building in Spain without his wings. There is a disconnection abroad, no sense of security or protection, demons are awakened and restless, dreams colder, and more cruel; the heat drains one's essence, melting the glue that keeps us who are broken together. I know that expectations are sad reflections of desires, shadows of my own inadequacies. I know that I am afraid, that heaven and hell are not places but permanent conditions, that my head is the prison guard of my heart. Blame and guilt come easily. There are no distractions, just meaningless directions, and I seem to have forgotten those I brought from home. Here, I am concerned with physical threats, trauma that can be shaken off with a block's worth of strides, yet I cannot seem to lose my naked shadow between the buildings. I thought I hid it well behind frozen gazes, but the mirrors say, *no, no, they know you are all wrong, you foolish girl, you poor little lie, they see through you, they sense your fear and feast upon it, you ignorant child, you are as small as the motes of dust drifting through the beam of a forgotten projector, the film torn and tangled, the screen stuck on one frame* / I should have stopped when the milkman spoke. He knows that it is not mirrors who lie, it is us.

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****** CrucifixionI used to drive my nails into / Your skin, some type of ****** / Crucifixion

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An AffairCrawling on all fours, traffic drags its bleeding body forward. / Men with collars of lipstick *tap tap tap* their fingers against steering wheels. / Time slows, cars inch, passing hands find cigarettes, cigarettes find fire.

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Milk for the MoribundThe blood in your throat / Milk for the moribund / You choke on need's euphemism

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The SuitcaseI buried a suitcase in the sand, / It's contents to remain unknown. / Although I wish to understand

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***** LaundryI washed your sheets on Mondays, a private liturgy / Their veracious nature spoke; my eyes sought not to see / I scrubbed those stains with child's hands

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Blood MoonThere's a blood moon in those eyes / by your heart shaped tattoo / and if an eclipse was for wishing,

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Not the Right PastImagine loving a sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth. / After you are together for eight months, let that sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth take you out in to the ocean, when the waves are cresting at six feet and you are terrified. You almost drowned when you were a child. He tells you to come out further. Turns his back on the wave, just like your father said never to do. He looks you in the eye and says I will never let anything happen to you, I am not him, you can trust me, I will not hurt you. / So you dive under the wave and he has you in his arms and the sun is expanding through the water droplets on your eyelashes. It’s cold but not too cold and it feels clean. You believe him, and believe that nothing is truer than this moment right now with the salt drying our lips and tangling our hair, nothing is braver than trusting someone despite the past. This is one of the greatest days of your life and you never want to leave the coast or his tattooed heart because this is what is real.

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LITTLE RED“Was it the backless back of a black dress that did it?” / They’ll ask, loudly / even though the wolves that roam these streets

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Scorpion TequilaIt seemed like a good idea at the time / Clear liquid with a scorpion, asleep / At the bottom of the bottle

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