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b for short Mar 2016
“Let it go,” he said.
So I release it all slowly,
like those 99 red balloons that saved
our little misled souls on bad teenage days.
Release it, and watch it float up and away
in 99 different directions,
in 99 different shades of ruthless red.
Let it go, and instruct yourself
to set fire to any and everything
it’s ever touched.
Burn the bridges, scorch the paths,
cauterize the arteries that
pumped warm blood for its purpose.
Set the fires, and let the light
from the florid flames
illuminate the corners
of your newfound smile
as you watch the embers
dance themselves
into white, meaningless ash
above your head.
© Bitsy Sanders, March 2016
b for short Mar 2016
There’s something so hopeful
about a pitch black sky—
the kind of deep and ominous nothing
that couldn’t care less about your
renewed sunrise and
clean slated second chances.
There’s a calm in that darkness
that I **** up in one breath.
I hold it there, in my swollen lungs,
until I go a purple fit for her majesty,
and any specks of light that catch my eye
tessellate and turn and repeat.
This world becomes a slow song
caught in a kaleidoscope,
and I’m dancing,
happily,
happily alone.
© Bitsy Sanders, March 2016
b for short Mar 2016
My heart beats with dissonance—
the kind of clash that grits teeth
and twists pretty faces.
Still, she pulses, unforgiving,
to her own imbalance,
aware of her existence;
aware that the definition of music
is infinite,
and her song will never beg
to be understood.
© Bitsy Sanders, March 2016
b for short Feb 2016
The weather plays me
just as well as anything.
Some sun would be nice.
© Bitsy Sanders, February 2016
b for short Feb 2016
My mind resembles something like
a rabid VCR—baring its teeth,
foaming, unapologetic, at the mouth,
rewinding and replaying and repeating
all of the small cuts of two people
I swear I used to know and love.
Rerunning a patchwork reel of the scenes
I can stand to remember—
(which is all of them when I’m feeling
particularly masochistic).
Rhythmic static travels from
top to bottom of my mind’s eye—
a familiar flaw, cracking and popping
as the picture struggles to come clear.
I try to stop it—all of it.
Rip plug from outlet—
throw this snarling archaic beast
against some unsuspecting wall.
But it’s made in the good ol’ US of A
and runs on something
a bit more complicated than
any energy they can send me a bill for.
So I'm stuck
in this cyclical hell,
where there is no fresh air,
and the only oxygen I can get
has to be ****** through
a barely functioning dollar store crazy straw.
And, really, my only anger is directed at Dante
for not including this part
in his little ditty about the Inferno.
I swear I’d take
trying and failing
to escape a river of boiling blood
over whatever it is that causes me
to create a dramatic VCR metaphor
any day.
© Bitsy Sanders, February 2016
b for short Feb 2016
I dug up the last of them
from the backyard
and plucked each
from a rusty coffee can.
Creased and yellowed,
I smoothed them out,
tracing their folds
with my dirt-caked fingernails.

These are all of my secrets I tell you.
Synonymous with mistakes you tell me.

In that moment, something leaden,
like guilt,
threads through my pursed lips,
but I don’t let it pull tight.
I carefully rip each stitch, instead,
and remember why they were buried.
With my seamless smile,
I grin widely, without doubt,
knowing it was okay
to finally let them breathe.
© Bitsy Sanders, February 2016
b for short Feb 2016
She’s been put together;
spattered with
handfuls of shiny warning labels that
no one ever took the time to read,
only to reside in a lonely wooden box—
sheltered, still, and safe.
Living unlit and knowing nothing but patience,
she’s unaware of all the wonderment
that resides just beneath her own surface.
When the box finally opens,
she’s handled carefully
by strong, gentle hands that recognize
all of her treacherous potential.
She doesn’t flinch,
when those trusted fingers
strike the match
to light her fuse.
She doesn’t fret
when the heat catalyzes
a chemical reaction—
one far beyond her control.
She only sings
when her own jolt sends her rocketing
a hundred feet into the night sky.
And when she can’t stand the pressure
any longer
she swallows what pride she has left
and explodes—
a million strands of glittering fire
decorating the dark, ominous unknown.
Just for a moment, she hopes
she’s the most beautiful thing
those hands have ever touched.
But as she fizzles out into a small cloud
of smoke and something that once was,
she accepts her purpose
as the short-lived,
soon forgotten,
spectacularly unsuspected
good time.
© Bitsy Sanders, February 2016
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