summer is just a bruise blossoming on my pearl skin
i'm eighteen and the world is sadistic
but you tell me i wear it well
you wear me
we're so elegant in this sin
you word me like a pariah
when it ends i'll be hell

you string words like a necklace
pull them around my throat
poet with a finest flute
filled with liquid gold
we lose
endless impressive nights
to the keen of jazz
trumpet notes collapse
a jaw bone against
a new language

dress me in silk
perfume my neck
engrave me with
your new decadence

daisy
you say
threading the word through
the tail end of august
daisy
like a chain of open mouthed flowers
daisy
the nights are wilting
shortening their hours
daisy
listen-
i could give her the world now
gold and love and the finest furs

when september comes
i turn nineteen
i wait in the atrium
bronzed like a summer's statue
your finery thread heavy against my neck
i am leaning into your mirror
the one that decorates the hall
it cuts me off at the neck
when it ends i'll be hell

watching sitcoms at three am
without you-
you left me seasons ago

do not wait for me-
there is not time
today has gone
yet i am here
without breath
keening with fear

i am a grain, caught
in an hourglass
yet i am a collector-
hoarding lost hours
in the lining
of my pocket

i take them out rarely
they are old keys
their locks are long gone

do not wait for me
there is not time
do not wait for me
i am already gone

you’ve lost weight-*
i am not skin and bone but my clothes hang
an elliptical waist that slips to my thighs
a second skin that wrinkles and lies
and says i’m well
by the cut of my body, bone crests emerging
like white flags-
i’m the shape of a woman,
a well woman-
a woman cut down to size

she takes ashes and sculpts them
into new perspectives.  new lives.
beginnings are like sweets at her fingers
colourful, varied on the tongue.
she can taste different directions before she commits
that’s just who she is

she is beautiful
waves of hair and a pierced nose
a ***** neo michaelangelo
sitting there in youth
patience in her tiring muscles
until she freezes into womanhood
on planes of smoothed stone.

she has grown beyond my stature;
an adult born in a huff of breath
that pours over our lives
her new status matches the pull of her eyes-
wells of blue insistence, i’m here, i’m here
I’ve grazed myself on eighteen,
I wear my newness well.

when she covers her arms in bracelets
hard little planets
that orbit her statement-
i’m me hello world i’m just me

when she paints her eyelids
lips
lashes
dying herself new

i can slowly trace the changes-
the moment she picked up an almanac
and put structure around the future
she was a dead woman

now
assume she is you
her ideas threaded like dreamcatchers
embellished with feathers, beads
that sag their delicate threads

assume she is given bait
that she counts magpies
their cloud white throats a portent
that does not sit well around her neck

assume she will live her life
as these things expect

i lost your direction
with my back against you i begged you
to unzip the sky

i was parched without shade
you looked like destiny
a mirage in a thirsty throat

i kissed the ground and broke my mouth
spit teeth that bled your name
but you came no closer

the pain was not divine
perception rose in red welts around my lips
mountains of flesh that held no beauty

i poured myself into this strange espousal of a world
cold cloudy glass
forever rounding walls
that held me in smeared thumbprints

on a hot day i am static
i dry slowly, paint
i am the ever madonna the lost woman
heroine heroine heroine
corrupt word that bursts like an aneurysm on the tongue
spreads like a warm solution

and we bred closer
fixing flesh on the bones of our connection
meet me when i come to you
don’t grow old with me
i can never change

the leash nerves held
keeping you that same size
until the sky seized with the threat
rain rain rain
and i was no prophet
just a woman you thought you could save
if your feet could make the steps

but i am not lost
i’m just waiting for you
you can find me under broken clouds
you can save me to soothe
your own self