this bruised ballerina forgot how to dance.
            her lithe body a marionette
artfully conducted by threads in her back
   at the nimble fingertips of some perverse desolation
       she moves mechanically
   to its twisted touch.

she is told to somehow turn scars to flight --
    mend wounded wings
             and glide, carelessly soar
      through painted skies and fairy clouds
sweet as a songbird's melody
    reborn, a fresh starling

(listen: she weakly sings)

my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:

fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft

sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -

did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?

in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; *sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass

i lose myself in the titter of your raindrops tonight
who listen to me more intimately
than any being ever could

for your dark a.m. streets breathe
a musky scent exactly like my broken love's lips
and a sip of you is fresh as your wry scarlet sunrise
which whispers secrets of espresso and brick
and aged thrice-thrifted books and the dim glow
of ***** neon signs who call to no one in particular;

during lonely nights when you drink me in, i melt
into a solace of wet pave and unlit alleys
and emerge among sinuous swirls of painted walls
and hazy lights, a blur of chilly comfort and
being perfectly lost between
you and the moon

see a penny
don't pick it up
dried, brown leaves on pavement
avoid them all costs
pick dandelions,
but not their petals
but most importantly,
be rid of the sorry's,
if they're not genuine

lashes kissing, i dissolve
            into these crumpled sheets
     which smell all too much
like your winter touch
           carved into my body
      sprinkled with sea salt and
minutes turn into falling petals
   now quick sips of burning scotch
are flames licking at my throat
                        a ceaseless dream

When you held my hands in your lap
your stare tattoed eyelashes on my wrists,
they're still bleeding.

You used inexpensive words to tell me
you never wanted to make me cry again,
I'm still sobbing.

My soft-petaled wings faded and crushed
as your last kiss fell from your lips to my cheek,
I'm still wilting.

For three months I held up my green-bean spine
with a meter stick, a lifeless statue of sprouting stem,
I'm still dying.

When I called you I know my hair slipped through
the phone speaker, and you could smell my skin,
You're still yearning.

But it's been three years now, and you no longer
care for teenage laughs and the discovery
of thigh and shoulder kisses,

Yet I'm still writing about
what a beautiful thing to have loved,
what a terrible thing to have said goodbye.