When I was small,
I ran sticks across railings
or else pointed them at strangers, threatening to shoot

I feigned innocence, as if the folds of my lemon dress wrapped themselves tight around me. Unfolding for no one.

Yet, that's not the truth. His cupped hands offering me sweet water, a drink from the cup of purgatory.

I opened for him. Cotton collapsing to the floor. Legs still and steady, breathe sticky with secrets.

He kissed me, a Judas kiss. As if I'd soon be hanging from a tree. A neck snapped, rope burnt and smoking.

I count the scars on his chest as my own crushes, the weight of a whiskey soul, singing me to sleep.

I transcend, a goddess of air, an angel with ***** blonde hair. As his mouth takes mine, acid tongue.

A school bell rings in the distance, cutting time into chunks, religiously.

And I wonder what it's like, to place meaning in these segments of hours. To count down days or name them.

The cold bites me. I shiver in a black coat and bite my blue lips.

Yet the sun would burn me if I let it. I must stick to the dark, bury my roots in the dirt and grow

(up)