The mirror looking back at her
screams compliments over the loud music
coming from the stereo behind.
With artfully smudged eyeliner,
she slips into the little black dress
purchased from the cheap lingerie shop
down the street from her apartment complex.
Six inches above the concrete sidewalk
clicking with every step,
a lit cigarette dangling at her teeth,
she walks proudly to the ball
twenty minutes past midnight.

The morning after;
spiked hot coffee in hand
to cure mistakes of the previous night
and a knock on the door
greets a worsening headache.
The door opens to a well dressed man
and a tiny glass slipper
atop a diamond-studded throne.
He holds the delicate shoe to her foot,
toe nails painted black,
and patiently waits for a response.

“Those aren’t my red stilettos.”

The path to a mind of insanity
can be seen as a gaping hole,
the one inside left hollow and empty.

Running from all signs of conformity
the truth is we are the ones who are full
of things only thought of as insanity.

Running from our own form of what we see
through the eyes which sit inside the skull
and wishing to be anything but empty.

“Don’t get caught up in the world’s vanity
or you will end up as nothing but cold”
are the words driving us towards insanity.

If the ones only filled with shallow glee
could understand our minds were carved from gold
and they will be the ones left aged and empty,

they would be forced to politely agree
upon the ones who have always been whole.
They are the jury and we plead insanity
while their minds and the prison cells stay empty.

I often wonder
why
certain things seem funny
giggling in class
stupid  
juvenile jokes
scrawled across wrinkled
scraps of paper
some is offensive
i'm shocked I wrote it in review
some is raunchy
I wonder if something passed between me and you
but mostly I think it was just the thrill
because it was between you and me
wasting our days
scribbling away on torn
pieces of paper

Lay me down to rest the bullet holes like goodnight kisses fill my chest
is this a dream or a reality because I am too blind to see please answer me my heart beat starts to fail is there anymore will power left in me? was the hell you dragged me through that consuming is it my spirit and soul I surrendered to the wind when I picked a fight with the demons I have locked within or was it the drugs I stole to fill my emptiness not to worry the angry dealer found me with a 12 gauge and he didn't miss so as the bullets exit my body I see the image of an old math teacher saying
*class dismissed

White.
Female.
Middle Class.
Heterosexual.
Agnostic.
Libertarian.

Yeah.
That's me.
That's that first layer,
thin as the paper you could
read it on.
Just a
Jane Doe,
a nameless, faceless
demographic.

But peeling back the layers,
ripping through page on page of a complicated novel,
digging
down
into
a
bottomless
hole
to
China,
unravelling
­the intricate
web of
stereotypestruthsliesassumptionsprejudice
and
there you will find
me,
a colorless genderless asexual
spirit whose frame
is crafted and molded
not with how the world
chooses to see me and
who "they" deem me to be;

no.

A guy that didn't know me well
once told me that I
spoke more urban than he
expected,
and I couldn't help but wonder why
someone from an urban area
couldn't speak like they were
from a city,
like somehow what he saw in my
whitefemaleheterosexualmiddleclassagnosticlibertarian
prolog­ue forbade me
from speaking in colloquials and
abbreviations.
Oh, I apologize,
I laughed later to my friend,
law students are supposed to speak
with an ostentatious vocabulary and
an heir of
(superfluous) arrogance.

I am rarely a prototype
of what it means to be
White,
of what it means to be
female;
middle-class* or not,
my parents insisted at age 8
that I begin to understand
the value of a dollar;
my sexuality indicates little
about my level of attraction
to the world around me;
agnostic is really just a term
I put because I'm still trying to
figure out whether I really
believe everything I was forced to
learn at Catholic school;
and isn't Libertarian just a fancy
word for I don't want to
choose liberal or conservative?

It's insulting to
ingest how much is
insinuated about
my depth in
the shallowest of pools.
My cheeks burn hot
with frustration as I
try to balance on a beam
cracking underneath the weight of
a world that is constantly begging me
to go back in the neatly
wrapped package from which
the world would prefer I
came.

I'm not someone
you can put in a *******
box and
label;
you can't contain my
shine behind
blackout blinds;
I will burst out of your bubble
and break your glass ceilings;
I will scream at the top of
my lungs in a soundproof room
until you HEAR me.

I'm not meant to be judged
by my cover,
and neither are you.

We are meant to be read.

no more rush for the factory gates

or bleary welcomes after whistle led race

no longer the shouts of “what shift you on mate?”

and befuddled replies “earlies, no, lates!”

the comforting throng of familial mass

at the end of each day that held no disgrace

when a days hard work meant a days earned pay

something they somehow forgot to replace

as our livelihoods fled to cheaper climes

and our citadels of labour fell rotting, debased

Sitting next to a stranger, I wonder what kind of life she goes home to.

The positive,
A mother who is kind and gentle and reassuring,
Who teaches her to be her own person rather than those surrounding her.
A father with dark skin from the sun,
Dedicated to his garden and enthused to teach her about it,
And also to teach her about life and change and fairness.

The negative,
A mother who was adventurous and spontaneous and wondrous,
Who taught her that not everyone is guaranteed
Enough time to live out their dreams.
A father with eyes as blue as her own, but with less joy,
Fortunate enough to be where he is,
But wishing that life hadn't torn him from his other half.

It's funny how you never look for company
until there's no one left to keep it.

an unread book,
a pair of broken headphones,
the shirt of someone who is perfect in my eyes.
a bic lighter,
a glass of water,
a succulent that i could never seem to keep alive.

condensation forms on the surface of the table
as the water begs to bring life back to the plant,
but the lonely plant only speaks of the sun
and the way it desires his light.