What about me do I want you to know?
I could say
I'm a lonely person
Who looks upon the world with a hunger
She doesn't understand.
Sometimes
I pass through the streets like a shadow
Gazing at the warm, rosy souls around me
And when people touch each other
Even in conversation, without noticing,
I ache with separateness
But not
With envy.

I could say
I'm a bit different
A bit dark,
I could say I've seen enough pain
To make me cruel
And that the only thing I'm truly proud of
Is that I am kind anyway.

I could tell you
That I've fallen in love with half a dozen strangers
Just for their eyes
And stayed there for years.
That although I rarely reach for anything,
I yearn in silence
Quietly smoldering, burning for a world full of rawness and contact,
But kept from it by a strangely thick skin
And brittle chinadoll bones.

I could tell you that when I choose to look into your eyes
And let you see the chaos in me
It is a gift which very few receive from me
And even fewer
Appreciate.

I could tell you that if you are gentle with me
I will mend every part of you that ever felt shattered
And meekly walk away when I am finished

I confess
I find it so much easier to be tender
To people who will forget me in the morning.
So much safer to run my fingers along the cheek of someone
Lost
To their need- whatever it may be-
Who won't
Or can't
Notice the hearth of my heart catching my ribs and sending cinders through my veins.
It is not love that makes me tender,
Although love blooms easily from my tenderness.
It is a fascination with other people's vulnerability
Their fragility
Their raw, honest desires and fears.
It draws me in and I spend all my days
Just tirelessly holding back arms that ache to comfort
And eyes that burn to see every dark corner of these intricate creatures I live near day after day
To see and understand and become,

Because I suppose the thing I'd most like to tell you
About me
Is that good and evil
Right and wrong
Mean very little to me, in the end:

I want to be.
I want to be
All.

I want to be every human thing there is
Touch it
Feel it
Taste it
Worship it.
I want to feel every wretched and exquisite thing I am capable of holding without shattering,
And I want to press them all with my palms
Into someone else's skin and watch them rise like ink.
It doesn't matter to me what you are, what you do,
Because whether it harms or mends I will look at you like a stained glass window
Like a statue of marble
Like a painting, all lit and framed and bursting with color.
I want
Every detail of this world
To touch every part of me
And that
Is what I should tell you now
Because that
Is what you will fear later.

Chubby cheeks! aww
www like a chinadoll so
pinchable cute adorable --
incurable

O *****'s opposite,
A great wall
     Of spine,
A Yin and Yang
     Of tongues,
We tug and pull
At territories,
     Acupuncture,
Our souls
     Populous
Of me and her,
As our energies, powers,
     Superpowers, stirring,
Growing, binging,
     Surging, and resurging,
Engulf
     A blazing evening.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Hot curling iron creating perfect tresses,
my hair is thinning fast, I can see my scalp.
Lush ruby lips as I pout and take a picture,
blood runs from them as my fingers claw trying to give them life.
Flawless porcelain skin like a chinadoll,
Years and years of scars are covered up.
Thick black lashes smeared with dark kohl,
Crystal teardrops create inky streams down my cheeks.
They flow and flow until my eyes ache and cannot produce anymore.
Mouth once filled with sugar now only tastes salt.
Exhausted.

Oh darling,
I've been at this game for a long, long time.
I can play it like a fiddle, this little tune.
I can win at it like a gladiator.
It was only a moment that I thought you noticed
The blood caked under my fingernails.
I realized quick
You thought it was mud
From the grave I'd dug out of.

Us here in the gutter,
We can't afford to be righteous.
We know our kind. We know our hearts.
For whatever I may be,
A little weak, a little cruel, a little vicious,
A little unfair
At least I have no delusions.
I refuse to dress up
The wickedness in me.
I am what I am, take it or leave it.

(You've left it,
Whether or not you admit it to yourself:
I hear it in the sharp edges of your voice
A How dare you?
As if I'm causing so much pain to the shambling masses
By managing mine through wit.
Cut me a break, with your broken chinadoll fingers,
Because I am shards on the floor
Doing my best.)

But I will recover:
I've been at this game for my entire life.
I am
Superb
At being abandoned.
You'll not see a thing from me-
It is my art.
Not a single tear, not a quirk in my smile,
You'll not hear a false note in my laugh
And I
Will always be laughing when it hurts
Because that
Is when it counts.
I am the warmer, the more charming, the life of the party,
The spark
Of the conversation
When I am hurting.
It
Is
My
Art.

I can play this tune like a fiddle,
And your mind with it.
My claws and fangs are my smiles
My "Go ahead, it's fine"s.
You'll feel not a whisper of resistance from me,
You'll see not a flicker of hurt
When with a flick of your tongue you lash me to ribbons
Over the pain I've disguised poorly for a moment-
For I'll not be so careless again: work will go into my outlets
So that no gauche misspeech can provide a thread for you to tug
And unravel me- no.
You'll see none of it, now that I am truly prepared.
Come to the rescue, guns blazing!
Add your bullets to the holes in my chest
Protecting someone who can more than handle
Little, limping old me.
I won't let it get me down
That you turn on a dime, dear.
Cause honestly, the only thing I have learned consistently from this life is:
                                                                               *You only lose
                                                                                  If you care.

Thoughtlessly, I pledged myself to her,
so in awe of the eloquence,
I handled her gently
and thought highly of her smile.

Isn't it funny
how quickly fondness turns sour?
How quickly one realizes
such beauty should be broken,
into a million little pieces
and scattered into the sea.

If she were a chinadoll,
I might have chipped away at her surface
until only rubble remained
or perhaps I might have cast her into a wall
and relished the sweet dissolution,
the wreckage that became of her.

Instead, I planted venom
into her skin, so that it might
intoxicate her simple-minded exterior
and show her what the world
is really made of.

She taught me more
about myself
than I could have possibly learned
on my own.