his hands were in my hair shoving my head down. i turn my face, and flashflash, i’m stitching myself inside out and all i can come up with is stained betrayal. his teeth are tough on my neck. i imagine they’re metal and somehow, it hurts less. his hands on my hips and he’s pulling me backwards. i’m screaming in my head, my skin is cracking and molding.

i still dream about it.

i still run my fingers along the edges and look at the scars, the bruises, the cigarette burns.

i throw my arms over my face and his mouth is by my ear and he whispers “i know you want it.”

i’ve always wanted it, just not with you.

i feel the wall against my head before the rest of me follows and crumbles like old newspaper.

someday i will be in the yellow pages, soaking through the paper and smiling, half-heartedly, through the words.

and i still wonder if the last lesson was learned. what never happened that night and never was, with him anyways, because of the blood between my thighs.

in my memory his face blurred in two different directions – as his jeans unzipped and i stopped breathing. he blurred into a future and i blurred into a past but somehow the world stopped at the present. his hands were unusually soft on my face.

they say jesus looks on and his palms are burning black. i’d love to smoke his skin in a snail shaped pipe and fly.

his hands are going up my shirt, the walls spin in twenty different versions of up and down. colour can no longer be contained. in my mind i run. in reality i couldn’t move.

the story will never end. the story will never change. i know my future will be just like my past, because affection is my weakness and the hole in my heart is growing. they say jesus will kiss the bruises on my hips and tell me it’s okay. if i get on my knees and pray well, they say he’ll forgive me.

i stopped believing in belief long before he tried to take it away.

there is a gleam, across the valley, a reflection,
I am sure,
a man made surface shiny,
I am sure,
no natural gleam of mica or diamond
blinks and flashes
as if
signaling to me, see, see me, reflect the sun,
seeming so
a sign
a significance I must grant synchronisity,
or ,
thought, what might
this shining thing be?

It is far from me and anchored, I see,
flash,
then flashy flashflash, light of sun,
fractaled -tole painted -fatal tell
light strokes on the future seen as this again,
once
more, the curiosity, was ist das?

A little mirror insisting, see, there see,
there is the sun,
topping the hill behind you, where you are
blind,
where I lack the power to signal a flash back,
for I sit watching,
in the morning shade,
yellow birds and blue, doing what birds do,
orioles and scrub jays,

magpie eyes in me, see that gleam again,
and laugh, I know,
what that is
signaling to me, see, see me, reflect the sun,
seeming so
a sign
of the times, for my report,

- Watch man, what of the morning?

I see a happy birthday balloon,
hung on a wire,

by a wind with a knot function,
naturally anchoring
webs, and threads, and strings and mylar shreds,
dancing from power lines
feeding juice to the drip system
in George's vineyard.