middytiddy

She cried

So I melted under her thumb 

And really gave her something to cry about.

I sat myself upon the rim of this world

And 

Watched as the flies went numb.

crisp.

Watched my life freckle away 

Until I was nothing more than mere slop.

Regurgitated.

Until I was leaking my hopes and dreams into one big piss pile.

Heap.

I was an artist, you know.

I carried my portfolio under my arms and bobbed up Wabash

Flush in the face, freckles scattered like paint chips.

And a teacher, too.

I bent down and broke a banana in half

And placed it in the sticky palms of a young boy

A poet, even.

I hadn’t thought about how much I thought about it

Until one day I found myself

Melted under her thumb

What am i if not yellow?

Which is to say

I'm sorry the knick knacks are

Over into the kiln

And I crackle into something new,

Something beautiful.

The red doesn't leave my head

and once we find our loves I ask

"why can't I perish with you all?"

and they say

If you told them.

Because you are the crazy rebound.

The ambiguous in between.

The abyss.

And your heart beat

Is merely a kidnapped man.

Filling your soul

With the pride of others

To feel something.

It starts when you're ten,

Ear pressed upon the door

Like the shouting is a drunken secret,

And follows you like a guilt ridden dog

found in the estranged corners of being.

In the bends of streets

you've known all your life,

The kiss back from the mango,

The strangling loneliness of summer.

Call me when you're free,

who discovered shoplifting

and is now recounting her goods

on a memorial bench at twelve A.M.

   One black nail polish

   Two sparkly eyeshadows

   Something to fill the hole in her chest

   Dark chocolate

   A bottle of ibuprofen 

   And her faith in destruction.

She rests her aches 

atop the payments of death’s memory.

Tonight she learned that pillows don’t hug back

And the world will crash and burn 

if she makes one wrong move.

She is manic like glitter.

The feline lugs fourth

a tiger nursing his chains dutifully

Rebounding tirelessly from genesis

once he is drunk on ecstasy, tomorrow he is prey

Pray tonight he doesn't starve in the moon's shadow.

Pray tomorrow he understand his marrow 

won't be the same as it is tonight

And the liquor will be smooth and dear, you hear?

Because the intolerable tispy of now will ferment.

And so I dreamed,

Feverish and drunkenly,

that the tigers could undress their stripes,

lick them, hang them to dry 

until they were wholly black like holy nights

And the tigers would forget their talons

as weapons

but only as a vessel for warmth.

To reap the love the moon sows.

Tonight, 

the tiger and I,

pretty girl: *glances back at me*