im shaking a snow globe and all flakes are stuck to the bottom. i can't make it snow inside. the smiling statuettes are broken and there's a hairline crack that slashes across the glass.
it used to wind and play the lightest tinkling music like a jewelry box my mom bought for me when she wanted me to be her girl. that's all over now. i think it got thrown in the trash years ago with my pink baby blanket and the arching ballerina doll.
i used to be someone's daughter. i used to be a girl shook up in snow with music ringing in the background. it's dead quiet now.
my thoughts are stuck to the bottom of my skull and can't be shaken up and the music crank is jammed and my heart is a silent overture.
i don't want to be a girl or a boy or a thing with limbs. and i don't want a girl or a boy or a thing as fragile as those statuettes with fractured arms.
they're still smiling even though they aren't whole. how do they hold their pose so completely?
ive never been much good at that so i just watch with admiration at the art of the inanimate,
cracking a hairline smile that can't stir my eyes.
i don't think i can shake you any harder and i don't think i can unglue those tiny flakes. after all, that's the whole ******* point, isn't it?
what good is a snow globe that doesn't snow or a person that can't love or a daughter that isn't?
what good am i to anyone if i can't be whole or good or correct? ive been playing at the art of the inanimate and those eternal smiles and pointed ballerina toes.
i thought if i was quiet as a figurine-- i thought. i thought. i thought.
and I'm shaking shaking shaking
and nothing is coming unhinged. there's no music. the hairline crack has become formidable.
I can't tell anyone still because of the complications of this grotesque girlhood and the *** that hangs suspended between us so artificial and illuminated. do you see it hanging there? or is it another thing that can only be and never act?
im getting better at this art of the inanimate. and this veneer of wholeness and manufactured joy.
smooth down my body in poreless plastic and close all entryways to trespassers
and the womanhood that fast approaches can't find me and the selfish needs of limbs will be void and the human desire to destroy everything it touches will be curbed if just for a moment.
i want to destroy you with how much I want. how much i want the snow to fall. how much I want to be baptized in the cold and kissed in a vacuum separate from the world.
our own dimension of mistakes and quiet where both of us can practice the art of the inanimate in peace.
i see you performing it too, and your own hairline smile that cracks.
did you think i wouldn't notice?
i think the snow is coming loose. i can feel it running down my cheeks. and im smiling even though it feels wrong.
the thoughts are dusting over me and resting in my eyelashes. i see them every time i blink. she's gone and so is he and there's more than i can count on all my fingers and toes that have left.
my knuckles turn white. my fingers tighten. the world is glittering glass that falls like the first snow.