apparently i wear my hesitation
my measured self control
in bold streaks of watercolors
across the pulled canvas of my face
but somehow that tension
the taut bounce of my shallow panorama
slides thinly by your
probing eyes poking at my weak spots
and waiting to watch me
shatter

search me
put the hidden words in quotations marks
and hit the return key
to query the google of my mind
whose only existence to you
is a retreating shadow
running past the wind
with a sonic boom of silence

it's easier to find something
when you have an idea where to look
and my subversive games
of smoke and mirrors
throwing my voice to a
different part of my body
the elegant distraction and the
final solution to my
nebulous existence
as a paper doll girl whose
amorphous two dimensional body
wears whatever
diaphanous primary color frock
the world demands to keep
it turning without hiccup
a sacrifice to the gods i have
foresaken and blasphemed
whose names i've taken in vain
and cursed with the most excruciating
fervor and
resolution

i want peace
which does not in fact live
in placating distraction
or hand waving while i'm
hemorrhaging from the
butchered wound in
my abdomen out of which
my secret shame seeks
to excrete that pheromone that
warns approaching creatures
that i am still
a wounded animal and
could snap at any moment
see red
then nothing

you can only help
a person so much when
every time they run
to your waiting arms
bleeding and broken
begging for absolution
or perhaps simply an
intercession for their muteness
and sutures of salvation
how do you help a person
who stands from the alter
with the transcendent certainty of
a religious experience
and yet still
pulls out those black wire stitches
while passing the last of the
empty pews
and the flickering flames
sending prayers up to an
empty firmament

i am the headlights on
the cars that follow in
solemn silence behind
the police escort
and the hearse
from church to finality
and a place in this world for eternity
a hole just my own
where peace is blackness of nothing
and the endless chatter
the bile whose acid
eats away at my brain
dries up and in its dessication
flies away in the arid winds
of terminal acceptance

you say you want the truth
but you're not like me
and you can't hide the pain
when i
hiding my fear
tell you that i need you
to leave
when all i want
is to keep your body pressed
infinitely close to mine
world without end
but my words fight to hold
the front line
and my canvas face is pulled
that much tighter.