Slip

dizzy sunbursts paint her vision
black –

someone find her a saviour
because how can a masochist split open
her ribs and rescue the heart
when she wants to watch it
s-
s

-stumble in its beating?

.
she used to think the most beautiful
thing in the world was the sun
as it blazed in glorious triumph
above a world at its
mercy:

but now she knows everything is made
from imagination
and the desperation of a mother

losing her child

to the intricacies of a mind too
twisted for the innocent
to handle.

.
she broke her neck
when she sat down on the path,

a knife in her hand to carve the
rocks from the dirt
and an SOS to the sky –

but she forgot to peel back the layers
of their eyes and they continued smiling,
crumbs at the corners of their lips,

breathtakingly blind.

.
i have lights under my eyelids –
they glow like the cheeks of those well-fed,

painfully beautiful.

i envy the way they loosen their corsets
and slip out when they want to:
freedom must smell like fresh air and

sunlit tears, i think.


.
spider lullabies circle blue-
tinged toes – glimpsing the body
curled on the floor,
the cave-in of her chest breathing in
the starlight of

sweat and blood and –

"where are the tears?"
she asks numbly, fingers circling
her ankles;

exhaustion whispers sweetly in her
ear of sleep and mornings
spent curled up in warm blankets to drive

away the icicles in her veins:
"too tired to sleep, leave me alone,"

she sighs –

and the moon turns away in disgust.

.
she swallows bubbles and
sour lies and watches as the cure

dances just out of reach:
too expensive,
too much trouble,
too honest.

and anyway, why is she thinking of the cure?
she is not sick.


.
when she breathes in,
the seams at her side snap a little more,
her bones waiting for

release.