clear gloss lipstick, sweet and see through
like you are, like you could be
like being in that 99 cent store for the first time all over again
and you can smell sour watermelon and plastic
all about the glitter packaging and all the different flavors could be the paths you decide to take one day
in seafoam t-shirts and tattered sneakers that bite at your heel
until it's the color of pink taffy but when you touch it something
bursts and you decide that skin is your favorite ***** afterall
you pass by the glitter and the fake flowers but waste your cents
instead in aspirins for your mother
but you steal those chips and that drink too and call it benevolence that you don't get caught
and you never will because you get what you give

In my mind there's a power that I keep by the shelf of books I once accumulated in an attempt to own everything
to keep something that would always stay, permanent to years
I never use it and at times the dim light from overhead makes me forget what it is i'm looking at
I don't touch it in case I've forgotten how to handle it and I think I may have
it might leave room for discussion or leave the room altogether
I was never good at piecing puzzles, the truth lying somewhere in the invariability of the same outcome
some call it probability or fate and fortune
it may even be unlucky
I used to be a woman who knew exactly what to say however poorly timed it could be
but now my mouth can't cooperate and I've forgotten all my favorite words

the thought comes all at once or not at all
a memory of something I couldn't name if you asked me
I'm in the zoo, California
my nose is sunburned
I'm walking through corridors of land-marked heavy handed people
as I coast through all the exhibits of animals
I spend too much time looking at the barefoot lion in his melancholic stare and I recognize something in it
he knows me through the crowd, there's a link there that I cannot grasp
not then, not right away but it comes years later in a bad acid trip I spend my whole life trying to forget
I can tell there's fear in his cage and the flies won't stop pestering
I feel sick and keep walking never looking back as the screams of awe and amazement come from behind me
I was once in terra firma too
the boy with the long jaw and the empty library after school that had only the sound of books waiting to be opened
collecting dust among with them, but also gathering knowledge that I was unable to use because I wasn't smart enough
there's a bubble in my brain where it has shoveled all the facts I am able to keep unlike friends or attention
i was always losing everyone in grocery aisles, amusement park parking lots and train stations
the unbearable part was how easy it was
how gently things shifted and sank
there was a dog in our neighborhood that was always tied to a leash never leaving the front yard as if it was part of the lawn decoration
it was always angry and the sign above the fence said beware
until one day it wasn't outside anymore, the noise had stopped and settled leaving it's owner to pack it's things and go
when I asked what had happened he said it had bit him when untying him from his post, shock and in pain he was unable to chase after him
years later in a different city with a different name, I swore I saw that same dog in the street with a woman walking beside him but he wasn't angry, the eyes were soft and the growl had turned into a delicate yip
I'd like to think he was happy
I'd like to think that there are always ways out of the leash

a decimal of time
wedged between a tile
of a room - unknown
it could have been a kitchen or the delirious floor of a bustling shop
down to the tedium of banter and the slow trickle of something like
a cultural shift
inside a downtrodden window she stared too long until she was
unrecognizable by her and those around her
disappearing from picture frames and unable to remember
what it was like to say something of importance
her tongue now a foreign agent unsure if it still served a purpose
other than being in someone else's mouth
her shirt pocket always containing something of a thrill
like pearls or cigarettes
but now there was nothing in those pockets
tea bags were now placed in jars and her nails never veneer various colors but the same **** that had enthralled her years earlier
now blending in with the canvas outfits she wore to be reminded of a hobby that could have meant something
if only she believed in anything

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

you're not alone
touch the ransom note
i have learned to become un-lost
the art of demystifying the weird ways that you can become kidnapped by yourself
you peel your layers
leave the doors open as if this world is not cruel
danger is a middle name that your 3rd grade friend once gave himself
things are different now, the stars
                                                        don't
                                                                ­sink
                                                            ­          in
                                                    ­                    a pool of
                                                              ­    d  a  r   k               
                      it was once so terrifying to imagine
what lays underneath and above
but you sleep inside of it, always have

The walls are slipping, in your mind that apartment is ever a reconciliation of forced adulthood and early realizations with the faux french ceilings and the off white walls, everything from the closet you trapped that cat in because it dug it's claws too deep into your skin and where's the line between affection and possession. The Cortez Apartments, like the last name you will never be able to claim because it doesn't show up on your birth certificate, not that you ever much cared about birth. Would-be apartments once hotels, now stripped at the turn of the century, my mid-century nightmare. But it never loses the gusto to haunt you in its corridors and I think I could have learned to love that but now things are less glamorous and I only wear dirt-stained jeans.
I should have used that fire escape, I should have climbed to the rooftop and absorbed the city into a jar that I could look at when I felt empty of blood cells. A defiant permanence, I can still taste the lead paint chipping and the exposed pipe but you aren't supposed to know that and why would you.