I am a master of Half-Truths
An artisan of rhetoric
So skilled in the craft that
I have lost the ability to
Differentiate between fact and fable
My thoughts are a flume of paint
Colouring ***** water
But the fish do know
What is swimmable and substantial and timeless
And they kiss at the river beds
Tickle the hollows of my ear drum
Eliciting a perpetual popping sound, bubbles I presume
Reality fuzing as O2 with a shield impermeable to the waves
But it draws on my heart
wholehearted admirer of beauty that I am
To be constantly checked
With a map set to fluoresce
An blinders on
I paint my trails

My birthday is today
Seventeen years since another Sunday at 9 AM
On top of a mountain called Ozark
In a land that reminded me of Harry Potter
Called Pettigrew like Peter
It's forests elicited sprites and daddy long legs
Made of me a changeling then spit me back out

I learned what real ice tea was at the age of three
It was my birthday
Doing Pirouettes on my aunts Patio
Again, under Arkansas stars
With faery lights leading my way
I ascended to the brush behind the house
Got lost in the greens and browns of paradise's supply
Returned with flesh painted the colour of love

In an apartment overlooking crab apple trees
Fresh Canadian foliage fostering a well concealed creek
On a 90 degree angle over a dark chocolate cake
My ninth birthday
I drank pickle juice because Vinny said it was limonade
I wore dresses that year
And coveted baskets filled to brim with blossoms
Baked the crab apples into a pie
But preferred mama's banana cream
I wore bandages on my arms
and grass stains on my knees
My tears washed away like Crayola markers
And my biggest inner questions had to do
With what was for breakfast
And the lifespan of a temporary tattoos

14 came with a ******* bow
Done up gaudily in greys with a sad little smile
Three years marked with pink splotches and lines
A subject to hormones and arsenic tones
My birthday
A celebration of decay
And mama still sang, and baked, and kissed my face
And didn't wake when I placed cotton ***** in her ears
Because I was a happy girl

Today is my birthday
And mama exclaims
"No more babies! All four of you are so grown!"
But the mirror still illustrates an odd little show
With a baby face
A girls chest
And a womans hips
An ordinary freak all stitched up
Awkward and too much of everything
But not enough all the same
And inside I know
Is a sea of paradoxical Samanthas
Some stubborn and loud
Some shy and reserved
All with changes to make
Books to read
And places to go
And  only few that are quite wanting yet
To be 17

I stop halfway
In most endeavors
because halfway
leaves space for me to wonder
halfway is my view
of the moon
of the stars
of venus sometimes
and it is always perfect
never tainted with the stench closeness can bring
the cemented knowledge
of a yes or a no
the lines come from my mind
halfway done
a frayed string
that I may pull and mutilate
as I see fit
halfway so
they don't see
I don't see
the inconsistency
that marks my brain
and in my fashion
(it's really become a trademark)
I will leave abruptly
and cold
and half heartedly
because my halfway head
is somewhere else

It is the jovial, gentle gradient of your first love
Transcending from the kind of blue that swims under a blanket of flesh on the topmost part of her wrist
Into an orange so pale it could just be pink;
Reminiscent of the peach of her cheeks
Dampered by the dreariness of a stormy Sunday noon
Light shrouded in the mysticism of "what if's" and "why"
It is the turbulence of heartbreak
Escaping with the breath you held in too long
Sighing a song of failed attempts and discarded hope
Dressed in the melancholy of grey-blue, exasperatingly clouding over in surrender;
The kind of dark that makes you wonder if it is pathetic fallacy
Or maybe just a coincidence that the sky can seem so sad.
All at once placid
Milky and cold and fresh as the first glass of Bessie's byproducts
It is the clarity accompanying self assurance
The comfort in the knowledge that blue is just a shade away from blue-grey
Cotton ***** on a sheet of glassy water
Just enough to get you through midday
Until scorching it sets, and your cat nap is marked with a rigid back and stood-up hairs
It is a blaze of passionate glory
The first crimson drop from the blood orange
Only to dilute before you into a tangerine so vivid you have to question if maybe your eyes are just over-dramatizing its hue.

Tangible toys to trifle with
Telescopes and televisions and telephones
Teaching us to tick and tock
Telling us time
Trading touches for tricks
Though doesn't it seem just so?

The collective ties then tears
Tucking individualism into sleep
Terrors of the twilight to wake and hint
Tweaked in turbulence to set the sails smooth
Trying at contentment to dig up but contempt
Though doesn't it seem just so?

Telepaths and tellers on muted megaphones
Teething a societal infant proves troublesome
Tight jawed and spoonfed
Track the time travellers, the ****** heretics
Tennessee in '33 preached inequality
Though doesn't it seem just so?