you’re a shy hiss
her voice echoes, whispers through the
stringy hair of green overgrown grass
I’m not the sister you knew all those years ago
the gods have been dangerous to me
in the city of root rot in between the cashmere sweaters
you stole from heaven, from shopping windows
the harvest is unfinished, as the gladiolas bow in prayers
for the follies underneath my petticoat
you wanted the birds to sing but now they scream
for the arrival of summer in the veins I consider
abused blue but have always been crimson sugar
I want to reach out and hold your hand
but it’s foreign now, the youth like creeping vines
that we clung to have vanished
leaving residuals of a wasteland that we once considered
home, manicured to remind you the letters you
threw out of your mouth from the roofs of
sunset apartments
the drugs you hid in the eye sockets of boys
that would eventually be murdered in ally streets
in downtown LA  
adulthood didn’t come in a red box
it came as mother death, knocking her meaty hand
on the door, uninvited and unintentional
as she rubs her temples with the bones of
the misguided
I’m grown don’t you know, you exclaim
I know the difference between the red rose
and the sick serpent underneath it
sure the children would think you crazy before
but when you talk about the rats always clawing
at night at the ceiling of your mouth
you know to laugh, you know that the wallpaper isn’t
shifting for everyone but it’s the gift of
knowing that there’s always two sides of things
that keeps you grounded
in the ever shifting quicksand of this moderate
temperature room for the easy living