#sfwriters

Do You Realize?? It always starts off with “I love this song” The party is hot We are perspiring in the dark black heat And when you yell to me above the noise “I love this song” you will have initiated my downfall I don’t know it yet And you don’t know it yet So my response is “me too” And later on after the party the “me too” will turn into us making out by my red Chevy Malibu in the West Cliff Drive parking lot And it’ll start out like this: your dark hair high cheekbones lanky arms rosy cheeks ample lips and feverous book analogies to Dubois’ double consciousness will be hot rising steam in the shower in which we fuck in For laughter For atrocities For good old Uncle Walt with The Flaming Lips droning from the stereo on top of the toilet tank And we will find comfort in our 2 A.M. helter-skelter transcendental questions on your parents’ rooftop with the Santa Cruz stars in view Find it in the early morning Saturdays in which the light glows through the velvet curtains like holy heaven is behind it And the dust particles that move like waves in slow motion And love will have a different meaning It is now vibrato instead of a steady stream pitch Lux pyramid Alone you are starlight but together we are deep twilight My rule is to never kiss boys with dirty fingernails Your nails were clean-cut so I thought maybe I’d be okay But baby why’d you have to hurt me so bad? Or was it the other way around? I know I’ve never been good with time Let’s be sure this is not the movies This GoPro life with hazy underwater escapades only lasts until the last beam of sun sinks behind the reflected honey colored ocean Like a mirror the palm trees use to check their hair for a night out So I’ll drape my flag proudly behind me And you in your wetsuit will hold your surfboard above your head as we walk off in opposite directions Our footprints in the sand trailing different paths Then washed away by the tide I should’ve said “I hate this song”

We surf We breathe in blue air Blue skies Blue ocean We know we’ll always find a fire at the end of the night You were a Russian boy so you were nasty and no good You listened to old school rap Cali born and raised so the locals called you Kali with a K You tasted like saltwater and sunflower seeds Like the tears in the sea You liked easy The way my black French braid fell on my back You were an untamed lion And this was your jungle Another day was just another sweet daydream Full of hibiscus flowers Sweet tea and coconuts You tasted like salt water and cigarettes There was fire in your loins The kind of fire in luaus you touched and loved the way it burned Why be in love when inevitably one of our hearts will shatter? Do you already hear it shattering? So then let’s go soulless But how can that be when our souls are our bodies and we use our bodies for lust sin? My cut toe from coral itches I’m anticipating the scars But you As badly as you marked my skin with your soft fingers Left nothing on my skin If I shut my eyes and think hard, there you are in a faded sepia memory And here I am Writing about it with ink smeared fingers Repeating the same actions Rewatching videos of you in the car Rehearing the “No I can’t, I’ve got work in the morning. I really would but I’ll be like a zombie tomorrow. Next time.” Maybe you said that because my makeup was washed off by the Pacific or that my chest wasn’t big enough Or that you knew I wanted more than just an aloha kiss Maybe it was all of it

Why are my bones breaking? They can no longer support my weight I am falling to the ground Down down down They eye me down like sweet meat They don’t see me They don’t see the colors of my mind or the scars on my knees They don’t see the three freckles that align perfectly on my face forming an Orion’s belt The one under my right eyebrow, the one on the left of the bridge of my nose, the one on my lower left cheek They don’t care if I’m a half broken toy doll— as long as I work As long as I can pleasure their senses Make myself aesthetically pleasing Their sun brown skin and stupid haircuts Their dark sunglasses and hungry stares I walk by and I can feel the eyes rolling over my body Like they’re scanning for a quick fix A quick fix for them because they fuck to forget they are fucked up The sand beneath my feet is hard This digital age They ask for naked pictures and talk you up like you’re worth something Until they get what they need That quick fix And love— this intangible thing I keep repeating over and over again like a prisoner in my mind It’s not real it’s not real it’s not real We train our minds to fall in love with beautiful creatures at glance But little do we know these beautiful creatures are monsters in disguise with sweet words and cologne So then when I whisper words to you in the back of your silver Nissan Saying I want you and that nothing else mattered What I really mean is I’m greedy and I want you to love me I want you to see the colors of my mind I want you to ask about the scars on my knees To press your fingertips onto each star of my Orion’s belt To say that even though I am a broken toy doll that cannot wind up, you will fix it instead of playing with me and then leaving me on the floor for the dog to chew up