#estelinalicorice

flaying across the fields

if it ever reaches you, please pull me back.

and take me where the heart is, say home, say here.

there's a spirit underneath soil when its washed,

it lifts onto the air, long enough for the clouds to come and kiss it

you were standing in the middle of something that feels like earth

you're here before, you've danced with me

from dawn till dusk

the smell of youth's all over us—

when the downpour has filled the window sills, you were soaking

screaming, devotion looks like downpours

your mother says. “clean, holy, barely human. believing in something against them is what they often worship.”

the breeze broke my wrist, you looked over

your lips caught the salt of the ground, you bury yourself in water, pulling me.

you said home. you said here.

tough skin and soft hair landing

besides a soft pedalled bike

where my mother's training wheels have been lying—

for long this is the place to be

rough red on flesh of ivories

where my sweater tears are left to die

legacies are laid besides my broken hearted bike.

because they call me,

young one,

never weep when things

turn to stone.

“every girl must be something”

must be filmed,

must be one-shot stars on fair woven silk.

and i go over a hundred ransacked rhythms i keep on playing

past my pulled hairpins, is there growth?

from maryjane flaws to amethyst stones.

i burn it til my skin succumbs

to where the paint bleeds on a little girl's arms

oh mother, lost over words

she never found until

they pass through these scars

like a prayer for mercy

when silver linings breaks down—tarnished.

burns breathe through fire

“every girl's got a wish”

and she calls to them,

oh she calls to them now.

the first of plenty; I never know

how poison ivy grows from my ill-bitten lungs,

careful climber, circus artisan

crawling like every whim-turned-dream i clutch from a lover's perfunctory plans.

it knows of a breath worth holding back

til it stretches far beneath these

cautious dreams

with a calmer magic, i believe.

that these hands are sculpted with a midas lust

worn down by first loves that wears fast like butterfly wings on a little girls hands at summerdusk.

brushed off margeurites,

plucked stalks of sweet scent.

slipped off the cradle, fell on the dais

deer on the headlights

prey for the eyes.

peppered kisses

are salt to scraped knees

puffed and powdered, there's someone through the looking glass

some carved out fantasy, out of leather trimmed lust.

and this skin has been open for faults

and short-gazed frowns,

and apologies after another,

for matters that goes beyond four summers.

I was on television.

roughened up russian doll on dried cornflowers

crawling within, for something similar

than the child sitting in a boudoir

choked in eat-me cakes and poisoned apple pies.

Mother how far does heaven go?

away from spray-tanned marionettes in three inch heels

away from dolled up lies; tongue tied

from beauty queen wishes

that these dreams will once belong to a little girl

How far does heaven go away from you?

I was here and there,

in vegas hotels and glittered up houses

I was up and above

scatterbrained and beyond

diva in the runways, jaded and shrewd

loved in the highways, ran over muse

Its all so pretty, but its miscontrued

Mommy i look beautiful

But i dont feel so good.

- z //tainted tiaras//

artwork: The Dance Class | Edgar Degas 1873

nor look back before they leave a wooden gate that creaks

as kisses do when you breath in between—

we break it, before your head falls into the gutter

and my shoulder bones cracks at weight

by gossamer hair and school buses

that never leads us to any escape.

down goes picket fences;

they planted themselves back in the soil—

to grow is to never know

how much of my father's heartbreak

could send him home

to paint the wood fresh milk as he liked it better when the lawn's cut—

the stain runs thicker on your own blood

ive peered into smoke that swells

like the butt of his cigarette before crash

he sleeps, with chest a flowerbed

ive became too careful getting past.

never go for foot wings on the run

they burn near shooting fire

before wishes reaches a hundred centigrade, they dissipate

with the sun

radios active yet i hear frequent

scream, they glow

as they saturate

on this land's distant dream.

i wouldnt want to skin trees

to put debris on alexandrias shelf

i held onto freedom

til it parted me

way far from suburban stories that dies unspoken

with resiliency.

the nature of mad men

on clandestine

kills a flock of birds that'll never sing.

- zi | we