Pastiche

I fear the day when children bicker and fight and mushroom clouds illuminate perilous nights

I fear the day when the price of life should fall so low, that power starved imbeciles launch missiles into places where babies sleep, and fathers pray while mothers weep.

I fear the day I look into my child’s eye and lie and lie voice splintered whispering “We aren’t going to die”.

I fear the day the skies unfold and bombs reign. Rivers of blood flowing through the cold streets; my brothers slain.

I fear the day I look into my child’s eye and lie and lie saying “Everything is fine”.

my father tells me we have nothing to worry about. last night he sent me one of those email chains that say at the top “Safety Tips For The Women In Your Life!!!! Don’t Let Her Die!!” 

me, and the stranger on the train. she is asleep and the man is asking me who i am going home to. i feel tears pricking the sides of my eyes. i am 13 while he towers over me. he reaches out one hand, and while i don’t know how she knows, she speaks up without opening her eyes: “If you touch my daughter, sir, I will murder you.” Whatever he grumbles is lost in history, because this moment I am so grateful for the existence of other people that I cannot breathe.

I am 19 and on my phone when i become aware of a 13 year old girl is smiling nervously at a man who’s saying disgusting things. I grab her arm. “There you are, cindy,” I say, and then look at the man like he is bile. “Do you need something from my sister?” i ask, and i walk away with her. she cries later.

a girl is an abyss a knife still wet with murder no angels left in her don’t you accept that bloodied hand.

“yet” -r.l., from the New York Times article “Yet Another Pretty Face”

I heard the siren song

of the girl with the

ocean eyes and the seaweed

in her hair

Her arms were warm

and her lips were soft

She offered me a kingdom

in the cold, dark deep

I might have gone but

but for one fatal flaw

Sushi it seems, has never

been my thing

WHAT FLOWS THROUGH YOUR VEINS? starlight. rivers of it, shifting liquid starlight drawn from the sky into my skin, there is starlight in these arteries, thick like glue, a shade of purple mixed from glitter paint and day old bruises.

WHAT FLOWS THROUGH YOUR VEINS? salt water from the sea. yes my body ebbs and flows with the tide, and it stings like salt, like teeth sinking in against an open wound but salt is a natural antiseptic and as much as it hurts in the short term, in the long term this ocean is pure.

WHAT FLOWS THROUGH YOUR VEINS? it may be easier to ask me what doesn’t. i carry more than the world with each heartbeat, from the earth to the sky to the seas; inside me is legion.