My blood is not red anymore
It is not even rufous
It is achromatic
I’ve seen it go to a watery grave
with moonshine
It drowned
for a foolish fluid
one so dimwitted
it forgot the word “No”
could be spoken
to bring their negligent ears
into bondage
(And not me)
My blood rushed out
In it’s gloom
I wanted to emulate it
and exit my body
just as they entered
What a theft
What a “five-finger discount”
Literally
It was a perfect portrait
A gun kissing the crown of my head
and my indifference
towards the money in the cash register
that I called my soul-case
If I’d even had any left
My lips moldered shut
They don’t like parting anymore
Two buds charred sorely
as a pen
that speaks only in black ink
I searched every crevice of that washroom
for a noose
I found my reflection
and thought that close enough
So there I hovered
hung up on my mirror image
suspended by two claws
honed with dejection
My eyes slammed taut
My pulse fisting bones in my face
and gnawing itself
with prowling fluorescents
I grazed the scuffs on my thighs
I hadn’t put there
for once
Then I remembered the nausea
snarled up in their cheeks
Their words like spiders
I don’t know where they’ve gone
and I don’t want to
“Is it that time of the month?’
said the shorter, more truculent boy
and he sniggered
I stood submerged
in hard edged a laugh
that liked to wrench my ears
and make rounds
on nights hot and heavy
with languor
and perhaps,
had I not been so small
or weak of muscle
had I worn a different dress
or forgotten to coat my lashes
had I sipped on tea
instead of hooch
I could’ve flagrantly pushed them away
Darted not with my eyes,
but my legs
I could’ve screamed “Get off me you scumbags!”
until my throat shriveled up
into a dried cranberry
But I didn’t
Instead I’m screaming
on a piece of paper
Because the worst that happens here
is a paper cut.