And I did it once again.
Skin picked and shaven,
Cakey frosted ivory,
Faceless, nameless,
Plasticity contusion.
Littered in the detailed fractures of a swelling stem,
Those skeletal twigs of intangible incestual wings,
splintered in stacks underneath his bed.
Apocalyptic comfort found in the veins of what remains...
Pineal shame,
Puny white me,
Post-karmic, futuristic-retrospective cosmic plan, slowly creeps towards me and offers its long inflaming hand.
Cricket twitch, echoes in the distant introspective glitch of my momentary intuition.
A bitter drip on tongue descends,
Tunneled in an unwanted exploration.
That sour pitched cacophony uncomfortably sung,
Through the ghastly cold touch of a righteous cockroached thumb.
Repugnance,
Spreading the stain of an untouched soul,
Quicksand, morphing me into dust.
Devouring the white and into the red I rust.

I fell for a madman, a lunatic, a clown
Knowing this all I can do is frown
For so many years I took his abuse
Him hunting a man who hides as Bruce

This cakey clown makeup will cover the bruise
A temporary reminder not to give him bad news
He threw me out the window, it’s not the first time
It’s all my fault, I got in the way of his crime

One thing I needed to remember, he’s the star of the show
It’s him and Batman, him and his foe
I was just a puppet, a means to an end
Maybe that why I met Ivy, I just needed a friend

I was charged to mend and fix his head
But it was him who got inside mine instead
My ambition clouded my judgment, all could see
He saw this flaw and decided to overtake me

I became his Harlequin, or at least I guess I was meant too
The issue is I thought for myself and didn’t share his worldview
He lured me in with sadness and my pity
He told me we would in the future rule Gotham city

I believed him, I changed into a red and black lackey
He said he just wanted to bring smiles and make himself happy
Mad love, it’s what the sirens called it
I guess they were right; how did I not take a hint?

But he never loved me, that much to me is now obvious
He hit, punched and dragged me, how was I so oblivious?
I was just a pawn in his mad Puppet play
I guess the joke was on me, isn’t that right Mr. J?

no painting is made up of an entirety of good strokes.
if a painting is started with a good stroke and slowly starts to deteriorate, good strokes can still be made. if a painting is horrible from the start, and the paint's already cakey and dry and stubborn, good strokes can still be made.
good strokes can be learned; precise and categorized and made with a focused eye. but education does not guarantee a good stroke.
good strokes can be random; flicking paint and getting it under your fingernails and ruining your brushes. but fate does not guarantee a good stroke.
a good stroke is found.
a good stroke is found by lucky people.

Somewhere between then and now my sparkly, light up sketchers turned into white air forces. Somewhere between then and now my pink unicorn bed sheets turned into white ones. Somewhere between then and now my puffy pink tutu dress turned into leggings and a sweatshirt. Somewhere between then and now I grew up.
I'm not sure if I knew that was going to be the last time I would take out my barbies to play on my front porch while my mom cooked dinner. I don't know if when my mom walked me and my siblings to the Narberth playground to play as a Friday afternoon surprise she knew she would never take those steps again. I used to daydream about being the age I am today, painting my face with mommy’s make up picturing what it would be like to be able to have my own and use it whenever I want when I get older but now when i think back on that i wish never started putting makeup on i the first place. Maybe it started with putting pink glittery lip gloss on but that harmless lip gloss changed into something much greater. It soon became a question of why are my lips not as pink as those girls or why are my lips smaller than hers. Those questions held so much more weight than one would think because that's when all the other questions of my little 7 year old self started thinking about. I should have been playing out with my siblings but I wasn't sure why my eyebrows looked like a boys or why when you look at my chin closely it looked like a golf ball on top of a frisbee while my friend's chin was defined in one straight line. Very very soon my questions just turned into insecurities and before I knew it I wasn't just my face. Why do my arms stick out like that? Why am I so much taller than everybody around me and why won't people stop talking about it? Why do my legs do that when I sit down in a chair? It was never just my imagination picking stuff out of me that needed to change. They started out with the way I have little bumps on my nose so I covered them up with foundation. Then my lashes were too short so I would curl them and put mascara on them. My lips are crusty. Oh ok i'll put loads of aquaphor on them while i sleep and then cover them up with pink lip oil in the morning. Oh. She said now I wear too much makeup and it looks cakey. Ok it's fine i'll just work all night to make my skin glowy and do “natural” makeup in the morning. Oh no! Now this boy said that I don't take care of myself and I don't care about what I look like. I'll go a little heavier on the makeup but still not too much so that she doesnt start calling me cake face again. That's when I start to remember putting on that pink glitter lip gloss. I don't want to get any older now. Of course I'm excited to drive, and go to college but I just can't stop thinking about how my life will never be anything like it used to be.
It tickles my brain a little bit to think about how I see the same girl that I used to play princess with passed out in someone's front yard. In 3rd grade I got in a fight with this one girl who used my bookmark instead of her own and it was the worst thing that happened to me that month. I would give so much to have a fight like that again or  honestly just to have any fight about opinions on frozen rather than be about my best friend kissing her boyfriend and lying about it to me. I would give everything to be able to go back but it's too late. I grew up too fast.