You do not define my colors,
or how I see my
eyes in the mirror.
You don't pull the corset
laces to fit me into your
ideal waist size;
you don't take my brush and
smudge out my
imperfections.
I'll paint the sky and show
you who I really am.
I'll dip the brush onto my
tongue, write the words in the
clouds that I've wanted to
say since I could
formulate screams on my
baby lips.
I am not the sun,
but you are not the moon;
how can you hail
higher than I when you
are still standing on the
ground?
Can those who are
mighty sprout crowns from their
heads like a baby
bird grows the
feathers on its wings?
Do jewels fall from your
mouth like your voice is
worth more than
Mitus's gold?
Do the branches of the
trees fall to their
arches as you
pass them by?
If you are so, then
please,
take my hand and
paint me red with
all the
things you are that I'll
never be.

He saw them,
two little red lines right below
her elbow.
He ran his finger over one again
and again,
making her confession
his reality.
They burned the
tip of his skin, but he
wanted to feel her
scars, so maybe
he could understand.
He wanted her to know he
felt them,
that it was okay.
But her still hid them underneath
her sleeve,
like crimson tattoos gotten on
a drunken night.

You call me beautiful,
but the only beauty you see is
the dip of a neckline,
the shade of a lipstick,
the length of a skirt.
Please, tell me I'm not
skinny enough, my hips are
too wide;
go on about how my hair needs
to be longer and my waist smaller,
my heels higher and my voice softer.
Say my skin isn't clear enough, my nails
are too short.
I am a material thing,
dressed up
like a doll, a Barbie.
I am not a woman, but
your plaything.
You want me to talk less and listen more,
when all I want to do is scream.

Flower petals fall,
pink girlish lips
kissing my skin as I lie beneath
drooping branches.
The grass around me is a blanket,
soft as fleece.
I inhale both scents, sweet and earthy
like late summer afternoons of
lawn mowing and iced tea.
They nip my tongue with
each breath I take.
I feel the sun’s heat
on my eyelids and ears
and feel my skin turn red,
but I don’t move from my spot
beneath the magnolia tree.
My grandmother calls my name,
but I don’t open my eyes.

Inspiration fails me,
my pen refuses to move from
its place on the page,
leaving a splotch the
size of the
thoughts I wish to write.
I wish I could fill
ten notebookes with my
sociopolitical nonsense
and whinings of every
trivial romance in my
young life.
I want to dry up pen after
pen, wake up
hungover from writing late
the night before,
cover each and every slip of
paper in alliterations
and onamonapias.
If only I could be a
real artist, one who
carries her notebook and
pen to libraries, coffee shops,
and movie theaters,
finding inspiration in ever
face and street corner.
But no.
I'm just sitting here,
pen in midair,
staring at a blank page.

You are simplicity,
a pair of jeans and a
black t-shirt.
Your eyes are the
color of slate slicked
with rain,
mine to hold in my
gaze, trying to find the
tiny brown spot you
say I never see.
You are long hikes in the
summer and car
rides in the winter,
hand in hand down old
dirt roads.
You are heavy metal
songs louder than the
beating of our
hearts late at night,
drowning out the
truths that
scream obscenities in
our ears.
You are uncertainty,
an awkward hand that
adjusts to
hold mine,
lanky fingers,
calloused and
agile beyond your
twenty years.
Your tongue lacks my
linguistic quickness,
but I'll never have your
gull or guts to
attempt the
impossible and
questionable moments you
live for.
I'll never see the
need to be care-free,
climb to your
heights, or throw
worries down the
street like the
pages of your
favorite book.

The patch of bare
skin below your
neck fascinates me,
smooth and pale beneath a
mint-colored shirt,
carelessly left unbuttoned at
the top of your breast.
I shy away from your
adolescent figure,
small and child-like in a
young man's arm,
but a
woman in mine.
I'm not meant to crave your
long hair and gloss-painted
lips, but the
freckles on your
cheeks mock me, your
hips intoxicate me.
I only imagine your
scent, your taste,
sweet and gentle like the
air inside me,
girl's perfume and
shampoo clung to you like
a veil.
You're nothing but
a little girl,
but,
in my arms,
you could be so
much more.

My life is measured in
calories,
grams of sugar,
pounds of fat.
I poke my arms,
grab my thighs and stomach,
trying to find less of
me than yesterday.
I count the times I
step onto the scale,
do the math down to the
decimal point,
hate myself for gaining,
hate myself for losing.
I want to see hip
bones, collar bones, every bone
jutting out of my body.
I want to be tiny and
breakable, like a little
procealin doll,
pale and painted and
perfect.
I want the number on that
electronic screen to
drop to double digits,
so there's nothing blocking the
view of my
feet on the scale.

I was born screaming,
yanked out of my
mother's womb,
****-naked and wailing.
If only I knew the
life that I would live,
I'd tie the umbilical
cord around my tiny
neck, scratch my paper-thin
skin with newly grown nails.
It wouldn't make a difference
to now,
my hands digging for something
deeper than blood
and veins.
I am hair and *******,
painted with scars,
breathing just to
stay alive.
I am alive but
not living.
I am as alive as I
was in an embryonic
sac.

Your eyes are like
magnets,
pulling me in,
your polar opposite.
You make me crave what
I shouldn't,
sweat in between
the sheets,
claws down our backs.
Make me feel you on
top of me, next to
me, inside of me.
Breath hard against my
neck, pull my hair
until my skull aches.
I want it, I want it,
I swear that I want it.
Be rough, be gentle,
take me as you may.
I'll be your
salve, your
little girl;
I will obey.
Promise to love
me,
and I'll stay
on my kness forever.

I'm scared.
        Of the next time I
                     worry,
        of the urges that come
                     after.
I now fear the
             blade
more than the
            blood,
more than the monsters inside
                     my head.
        The screams become
                    louder,
        the tears run
                    harder,
everything blows into
                   oblivion.
           You look in the mirror,
           see the fear reflected
           in the edge of your
              pupils,
           dancing in the ring
               of your iris.
           The real fear is
             of yourself,
           blade in your hand,
           blood on your arms.

My body is my
only canvas,
but my tools lack the
love and bristles of a
painter's brush.
I am a
masterpiece, an
abstract of scars and
freckled skin.
I draw lines of
blood along my
arms, carve words
into my thighs.
I tell a story in
broken lines
because my voice and
hands waiver.
The picture I paint isn't
pretty;
it's coated in
tears and
shedded make-up,
veins forever
pumping blood down
my cheeks.
But the tale it
tells is
beyond skin deep,
down to heart and
lungs and
moving limbs,
the way we
walk and the
way we sing,
how we love and
are loved,
despite titles and
the color of
our skin,
the meals we've
skipped or
how many times we've
made ourselves bleed.
You may take the
knife to your
wrist, or pour the
bleach down your
throat, but
you
are no less beautiful than the
models on TV who
bear their bones and
cover up the imperfections,
the girls at lunch who
eat whatever they
want and still are as
thin as the
toothpicks that hold their
sandwiches together,
the bigger kids who
learned to accept their
bodies before you could ever
accept yours,
or the face in the
mirror you've failed to
associate with the
one looking back.

I'm on the outside
looking in, staring
through the glass with
both hands breaking through.
Nothing is what it seems,
illusions of a
rose-colored life.
They are smiling,
they are laughing,
they are the
beautiful people we've always
strived to be.
But the light that
really bathes then lacks a
pulse;
it is dark and cold like
snowless solstice nights.
What we don't realize is
that they're looking out
at us,
wishing for the skies and
abnormality that we take
for granted.

"Are you scared?"
She stared into his brown
eyes, forcing him to
see the darkness behind the browns
and greens of hers.
"No".
She placed his hands on
her collar bones,
running them down her shoulder
blades, sticking out like
bird wings,
then over her ribcage,
down to her hips.
"Are you scared now?"
He shook his head.
She stuck her arms out for him
to see,
cuts new and old visible on her
placid wrists.
She took his hand again,
and ran his fingertips over her
wounds.
"Still not scared?"
He refused to answer.
This time, she stepped away,
unscrewing the top from
her head,
releasing her demons into him.

The man in the moon likes to
stay up late.
He sleeps during the day
when the sun is high,
then wakes up
when we go to bed.
He keeps the lights on to
block out the dark,
lighting up the moon
like a giant disco ball.
The stars are his only friends,
but they come and go
as they please.
He's left with his thoughts,
contemplations of the sky.
He blocks out the mocking of
those bigger than he-
planets and shooting stars.
But without the man in the moon
they'd be lost,
and he'd be just a dark rock
hanging in the sky.

I am not graceful,
I am not good.
I stumble over words
when I’m speaking.
I take too long thinking of
what to say,
and sometimes what comes out
isn’t right.
I dream too much and live
away from reality,
using ink and pen as
my ultimate escape.
I cry too much and smile
too little;
I yell when I’m excited and
shut up when I’m mad;
I never seem to find the right
balance of anything.
I am not perfect;
if only perfection
was an easy
poem to write.

Is it too early
to say that
I love you?
Would the words kiss
your lips as well,
or fall into a heap at my feet?
Would your eyes hold mine like
the stars are held by the
night sky?
Would you dare look over your shoulder,
bite your tongue,
and push my hand away?
Am I asking for too much?
Is your heart something I'm
not allowed to want?
Is my own not pure enough to
beat in time with yours?
Am I too boring, too
needy, too ugly for you to
care for?
Would you say
"I love you" back,
or would I only
be given silence?

Give me a lazy
afternoon,
underneath white sheets and
a setting sun.
Your snores are light as
you sleep next to me,
your face gentle like the
hands that hold my waist.
Unlike you, I can't
seem to sleep.
I listen to the voices and
laughter outside of
your bedroom window,
watching your
chest rise and fall,
the deep honey
glow of your cheek against
mine.
And when you wake,
you don't speak,
staring at me with
sleepy eyes and
quiet lips.
You kiss my cheek,
and nestle back into the
hollow of my neck,
falling asleep until the
moon takes us away.

The energy has
left me;
I no longer
exist.
I am only body
parts, like
a machine set on
auto pilot.
My mind is
elsewhere,
on an adventure somewhere in
Peru, or under the
Pacific ocean's front.
It's like
they
own me,
gouge out my
eyes, cut off
my tongue and make
me pretty;
pinch my
waist and paint
my lips,
sew them like a
designer dress.
If the rest have
given up, why
shouldn't I,
a black pawn among
kings and
queens?

So many butterflies;
on my arms, my thighs,
my hips.
I want to let them
free, let them fade from
each layer of skin,
but the razor wants them
dead.
It wants to nip off their
wings like little pieces of
construction paper,
slice off their antennaes,
rip open their
abdomens.
Blood is what it
lusts for,
its trophy, its
pride.
It is no longer a
tool, but a
self-destructive weapon.
It kills the living and
the hope,
takes away every
color from their
wings until there's
only red.

I can't breathe anymore;
there's a weight on my
chest like a boulder.
I'm numb,
although my ribs
are breaking.
I can hear them
crack, but I can't
feel their splintered
ends in my sides.
I'm drowning;
my thoughts consume me.
They coat my throat like
tar, sticky and black.
They hold down my
tongue, make it
heavy like lead.
I'm suffocating,
hands around my neck,
blue in the face,
red in the lips,
crack and dried up,
a desert in the
winter snow.
I'm bleeding out,
ruby staind,
purple bruises.
I'm singing an
auria,
a muffled hymn,
a cry for help.

Sometimes I want to
scream, but forget
that I have
lungs.
Nails digging into
palms too soft,
half moon creases into
skin like nights
lasted until three
in the morning.
I cannot find
voice;
I am silent.
You may open my
mouth, but the
words are
stuck to its
roof, saturated in
its tongue.
You may rip the
duct tape off,
peeling layer upon
layer of
skin until blood
trickles down to my
teeth, but I
will not cry out,
not even smack
my lips;
I am silence.

Why do I still crave
you when all you craved
for was what lies
between my legs?
How can I miss
you so when you gave
me up so easily?
I was just another,
one more mark on your
**** as I made another on
my wrist.
You were tender like the
skin that lies there,
lips sweet like July afternoons,
lustful like Parisian
nights.
You were a dream fallen to
a nightmare,
taking me in your
arms only to throw
me away, down into
a pit too
steep to climb
out of.
You're a gentle
daemon,
hands like
claws, drawing
blood from my neck,
trickling down my
breat like a
corpsed stream.

I'm sad.
I don't want to
be poetic about
it, and compare my
tears to the
drops of
rain before the
storm, or how this
weight inside my
chest shortens my
breaths and
makes my
heart work
harder,
beat
harder.
I'm done with trying to
write everything
away, like paper can
keep my emotions
prisoner when I
shut the book.
Why does my
throat tighten,
and my
eyes feel heavy
with grief like lead?
Why can't I
shake the
dread and the
worry, the belief that
there won't be
a better tomorrow?
When will I
be at rest?
When will I
be asleep at two
in the morning, instead of
nursing my
demons at the
mother's breast of
my mind,
too tired to
wean then from the
****** that
drains me?

Tear me out, strip
me down;
I am nothing.
Destroy my heart,
rip it to
shreads;
I deserve it.
I'm not good
enough for love
that treats you right,
or warm callused
hands late at night.
I won't be
skinny or gorgeous
because I'm not meant
to be,
no matter how much I
wish the fat away.
Skin me raw, hang
me out to dry,
watch me rot like I
should have long ago.
Pain is the only
thing I've ever earned,
thus the only
life I'll ever deserve.

One day she'll leave everything;
the color-changing leaves,
the fallen snow she played in on
gray winter days,
the sun in her eyes as she tried to block it
with a thin white arm.
The mirrors will be gone,
no longer able to torment her with
her waistline, her ribs, her hipbones;
she won't feel hungry anymore,
only light-headed and full of air,
too afraid to say she's starving.
She'll walk away from
her mother, frail with worry;
her father, unable to speak his;
her best friend, always there with her
on the edge of it all.
And there he is,
holding her against his sweatshirt,
thinking it'll warm the cold inside her.
He doesn't know she's not there;
he's only holding her shell,
now hollow and empty
like her stomach.

Your life is a story.
The spine is cracked,
pages are missing,
but no space is left
vacant.
Each chapter holds every
tear, every ****** knee,
every night spent alone.
They quote the thoughts and
conversations you wish you
had forgotten,
the screams and the
hand gestures,
every bad name you've called
yourself since you were ten,
all of it branded to the
pages in black ink.
You wish you could burn
it all like you
used to burn your thighs.
You don't remember the
pages you crumpled up
and threw away,
the eskimo and
butterfly kisses,
the summers you spent
by his side.
You lost your best friend's
laugh and the smell of
chocolate chip cookies.
You closed your eyes to the
beauty you always had,
the smile that was always yours,
the feeling of a pen writing out
your story.

We are bent, but not
broken.
Our bodies are old
tree stumps cut
down long ago,
but our hearts and
minds will stretch like
branches, reach towards the
stars that we'll
wear like late
cherry blossoms.
We are dried and
withered from years of
harsh words against our
skin, and battered
fists into our guts.
But, you and I, will
join together our
hands and intertwine our
fingers into limbs
a hundred strong.
We will stand taller than
they, upon hills and
mountain tops, higher than the
clouds that once blocked
our eyes.
We are the underdogs,
while they sit among their
riches and animosity.
But we are the ones who
will change this
world, dig up the
soil and plant the
remains of what little
good is
left in the
palm of
our hands.

I can only hold on
so long,
like slips of
paper in your hand.
I am not chained
down to you or
this life;
I am
freedom.
I'll never grow the
wings of a
bird or butterfly,
or be above this
world like clouds
in the sky,
but I am not
sedentary.
I am not a
tree, but I am
grounded.
I'll stay until I
uproot or am
uprooted, taking with
me the seasons and
their grace,
the apple blossoms behind
my ears,
and my withered
arms from too
harsh a winter.
I am imagination
and spirit,
I am essence.
I am beyond this
world in
eyes and
heart, in the
scars and
hairs that
cover my body;
I am the remains
of humanity,
where humanity
itself lies within my
ashes.

The demons never say
goodnight;
they never wait until
morning.
They're waiting in
the shadows,
trolls under the bridge,
monsters in the closet,
nightmares worse than our
most sweat-drenching
dreams.

...I can never go to sleep.

As a little girl, I held
books that took up my whole lap,
reading stories of knights
and damsels in distress,
full of evil and love, and
every other piece of magic a kid
can gobble up like drops of
honey and sugar.
I absorbed each tale like a sponge:
Rapunzel, with hair long and golden,
tossing it down the length of her
tower for the man waiting below;
Sleeping Beauty, asleep with love on
her lips for a hundred years until
someone was willing to take it;
Cinderella, running at the stroke of
midnight, for fear of her beauty
fading, only to be found by the size of
her dainty foot.
Now I stare out the window of
a second-story bedroom, barefoot,
hair surrounding my face like a red halo,
wondering if there is
a happy ending for me,
or if I'm destined
to read lies and stare out windows,
wishing everyday for
my prince to come and
sweep me off my feet,
instead of some girl in
a tower or one fast asleep.

Compared to you,
I am nothing special.
I am the flower in
your hair,
the ground beneath
your feet.
You are what adds the
esscence to my life,
the cream and sugar that
take away the
bitterness of my morning coffee.
It's your arms I
run to, your shoulder I
cry on, your smiles I
always cherish.
I am the tears and
sorrow you choose to
put up with,
the thorn in your
thumb you refuse to
yank out.
I am not like you,
but there you are,
hand out to
me like I actually
belong in
your world.

You're only a glimmer,
a touch of
the skin, a slight of
the hand.
Your eyes are only mirrors, and your hands
a woodland breeze,
a dream I've tried
to remember.
Your breath is the
smoke in my lungs,
a fire burning beneath the
surface of
my groin,
the sweet grainy earth from your
lips to mine.
But if I reach out to
your cheek, you'll
turn to sand between
my fingers, blowing
away with the
breath of a
broken kiss.
Yet I will still
hear you,
I will still feel you
against my breast.
But still,
you are only a
dream,
transparent as the
moon and as
distant as
the stars.

Cigarette between your
lips, smoke around
your face,
you are an angel.
You cloud your eyes with
depth and drink, and
coat your lips
with ash,
stale-**** breath in
your lungs.
You are not
bad, but the
goodness inside of you is the
size of an
ember from your
last cigarette.
You are tar and
toxins, hidden beneath the
sickly sweet tang
of nicotine.
You were intoxication,
a drink I abused because I
couldn't forget the taste.
You are a drug inside my
body, flowing through my
blood stream,
poisoning my veins.
You were never
good for me, but I
enjoyed the sickness,
the sweat,
the illusion that I
was a light you wouldn't
burn out.

Falling in love
is like
trying to match
snowflakes;
no two are ever the same.
No two people carry
the same heart,
the same story.
Hands are held tighter
or looser,
kisses get bigger
or smaller,
goodbyes get longer
or shorter.
Lips take different
shapes, form unfamiliar
words, new
skin against skin,
another eager
body to explore.
You are beautifully
unique like the
first snowfall,
like a grain
of sand,
like the scar on
the back of your hand.

He’ll never see her eyes again,
two glossy marbles glued into a
pair of eye sockets,
blue and vacant like a
November sky.
He won’t kiss her cheeks or hands,
her temples or wrists;
he won’t feel her skin
on his lips,
smooth and cold as ice on
an abandoned road.
He won’t hear her voice say his name
over and over again,
a broken record.
She is spring freezing into winter,
graciously,
cautiously,
and she’ll never thaw out.

I can't find the
words to smash in your
face like a brick,
or tie around your
neck like a noose.
I want to scream how
much I hate you until your
ears ring,
***** my hands with your
sweet nothings,
nothing but lies as
you took another
beneath you.
Was I ever
enough?
Even if I'd given you the
last simplicity of my
being, would it ever
have been
enough?
I wish my words could
slap you hard like
yours did:
"****** up",
"ignorant",
"I could've done better".
But my tongue
bleeds with how long I've
been holding them in,
sharp like
razor blades on the insides
of my cheeks,
wishing so to carve out
yours like you did a
fifteen year old girl's
innocense.
Sweet child, if only I
could hold her to
my chest, and
reassure her that she was
never the impure one.

Staring out at the horizon,
I watch the rain hit the
ground like bullets,
clouds passing
like they don’t see
me below.
The storm washes away
our destruction,
the demons we wish to
hide beneath the dirt.
It is our salvation,
purging the Earth of us.
We are the erosion,
the acid that decays everything
that matters.
We strip animals of their
homes, take their young to
feed ours,
watch the trees as they
fall to the ground.

I promise to be
your sweetheart,
to smile for you and not
tear up my skin.
I'll sit on your lap when
you're drunk, and I'll
hold your hand when
you're not.
I'll kiss your
lips, your cheeks, your
neck, because you
deserve to be treasured.
I'll turn away when you
smoke your special
cigarettes, but secretly
inhale their scent when you
hold me close.
I'll learn your favorite
song by Dream Theater,
know the words by
heart like I know the
letters of your name.
I want to be your
sunshine, your
everything.
I want to be the
one who wakes up to
your green eyes every
morning, bright like
precious emeralds in the
early light.

F-A-T;
the word stands out
bold in my brain.
Down another
cupcake, another cup
of Coke,
not thinking of the
sugary morsels that run
past my lips until another
pound is added on the
scale.
I'm triple digits;
too big, too
flabby, not small
enough for a
size two dress.
I put a finger down my
throat, but nothing comes
out into the
foamy toilet water below me.
I count each calorie and
gram of saturated fat,
but I always fail,
always binge until I
want to die.
Swim another
lap, run
another mile,
grind bone against
bone with every
strain of my muscle.
They say that I am
healthy,
but healthy is never
thin.

If I am an
attention seeker,
let me carve the
words into myself like a
label,
a definition of a
four-lettered name.
I am more than
nights of spinning and
contemplating,
razor in my hand,
moving like a silver
dancer through my fingers,
but there it is,
tracing my veins as a
pencil traces paper,
drawing patterns up and
down my arms in permanent
red paint.
Let me tie a
hairband around my
wrist and snap it until my
veins fashion welts,
red over blue on
placid skin,
vines through to my
fingertips, thorns under my
nails with ******
red blooms like
cigarette burns.
Let me cry underneath street
lamps, audible to the
world, open and
vulnerable like the
new cuts on
my skin.

She stands there,
simply,
cocking her head like
a dog.
She doesn’t understand
the glare of your eyes or
the dip of
the corners of your mouth.
She is innocent,
staring at her Converse,
toes turned in,
hips jutted out.
She twiddles her thumbs,
pulls at her shirt,
just so her eyes don’t
have to meet yours.
You take her in
your arms, but
she pushes you
away,
taking with her
the perfume smell of
gardenias that
you miss.

I can't give you handfuls of dollar bills,
crip and new and ready to be spent,
only stacks of sentences, flowing together like
the melody of a piano.
All I can give are my thoughts
that stain the paper, splotches of blue
and black, straight lines and curves.
Give me your heart,
and I'll give you a poem,
a sonnet,
a love song.
I'll link my hand with yours around a pen
and write our words as one,
a harmony of both of us,
things we both wish we could give the other,
when all we have are words,
cheap as a sheet of lined paper.

Where are the days when you
called me baby,
held my hand, and looked
at the stars?
You said to my
eyes, there was no comparison,
full like your
lips along my skin.
I was your princess,
the little girl taken under
your wing and named
as yours.
What happened to the
promises you made,
buried along with every
ounce of feelings you
had for me?
Do you know that
I cared?
Do you know that I
held you while
you slept,
loving you with every
breath you took,
stroking your hair like a
mother strokes a child's?

I take one step forward, only
to take two steps back,
looking over my shoulder,
afraid to leave you behind.
But he's right there, so close that if
I reach out a hand, I can graze
his white cheek with my fingertips.
But there you are, right behind me,
your arms open wide like you'll
actually catch me if I fall back.
I'm stuck in between now and
a memory, not sure where my heart
is, only sure of the throb of the
questions it holds in its chambers.
Why can't I forget your blue eyes that
bore into mine,
and replace them with the thought of his,
big and brown and innocent?
How can I take his heart in my hands
when they easily crushed yours and left
both of us bleeding?

If only sleep would
come sooner,
so I can curl up  in
bed and pretend that you
still love me.
Your breath at my neck,
my body firm against yours,
you'd whisper how pretty I am,
and I'd mumble a protest,
too tired to try and
deny it further.
But then I open my eyes and
the place beside me
is empty.
You aren't here tonight,
and you aren't coming any other.
I'm lonely without you, but
you wouldn't care;
you know that I miss you, but
you still don't care.
I pull the blankets
tighter around me,
wishing it was you I was
falling asleep with, and not
a pile of pillows.

You, my good man,
are vain.
With your swaggering walk
and the way you dress,
you think that any
woman would swoon
at the sight of you.
But all they do is stare at your
suit-clad self and your huge
goofy grin.
If you think they’re impressed,
your designer sunglasses must be
blocking out their snarls.
You think your voice is to women
like a flute is to a snake,
a lure.
The truth is hidden in the
knot of your tie,
behind the dark lenses of
your sunglasses,
the spot where your
tongue meets
your teeth.