Sign your name upon my lips
I'll sing you a lullaby
Nighttime closes around you
Filling you with lovers bliss
Until you've drunk the poison
L**eave me shaken not stirred
© 2014 Christina Jackson

I saw a ghost the other day
His eyes hollow, haunting me
from afar
The years spent picking up
every broken piece of my heart
Every scar, inside and out
is only bandaged over
not repaired
I'm afraid the ghost of you
will never disappear
My shoulders do not have room
for one more
© 2014 Christina Jackson

How provocative can I get?
People always tell me
My brain and my mouth don't connect.
I have a good head on my shoulders
Or so they think
And an unlucky case of
"Foot-in-mouth" syndrome.

The awkward first impressions are the best.
I'm pretty good with adults
As long as they can hold a conversation with me
Long enough to break the ten foot-thick ice.

But oh, I'm smart
That's what they call it now?
******* my life up
Throwing everything that has been given to me away
For a boy, a dream, a utopia?
That's smart?
I think not.

Sexcapades never go so swimmingly
With men ranging in age
A mouth like a cannon on me
Spewing curse words around authoritative figures
Never leaving anything to imagination
Being too blunt
Speaking first, thinking later?

They call me provocative
As if it is a problem.
Well, if I'm a problem
Then count me in.

Here we are in the tunnel of a yellow slide at the park
with clumps of smoke falling from your mouth like mud
but I shouldn’t be surprised at that

we sat on your porch
and the veins in your arms were just asking to strangle me
and if I’m honest with myself I would have let them
because I couldn’t imagine a better way to end myself

and after work one day I went to the maze near your house

and it was raining warmth out of the dark sky

and I pulled the petals off of all the roses
and threw them in the air and let them rain down on me
because I needed to feel beautiful and dramatic for just a minute
after such a long day

and you watched from your car

because I was just a stupid silly girl that you didn’t want to get caught up in

I got my first tattoo when I was 15
and the feeling exhilarated me
and to this day the buzzing of the gun excites me

and even to this day the sound of your voice creates something inside of me

and last summer I had 4 people in my car that I later totaled

and we were smoking **** in the park
because we bought three blunts at $5 each

because we went down to southeast
and copped them from the black boys playing basketball in the street

and that was back when I still got paranoid about things

like smoke coming out of the car windows at night
and things like my mother knowing the redness in my eyes
wasn’t from my contacts