Sometimes I Am Whole

Some days
I am am angel
with the devil on my back
spreading wicked propaganda
smashing down on my eardrum
with his pitchfork

Sometimes
I am a child
that plays pretend
burning deep is my soul
filled with tarnished memories
like broken jewelry clasps
I never got around to fixing

I am so many things
some of which I don't even know
like the virginity lost of a teenager
or untied shoelaces

Some days
I feel complete
while others, I am not
like an unfinished chapter
just before the writer crashed down
onto pavement

I can be a firefly in the night
or perhaps a candle
a light, a flame flickering
in an otherwise unsettling darkness
draped over the whole world
like warm velvet

I am the puddle of urine
on the bathroom floor
of the store downtown
where you like to window shop
I spread over laminate tiles
emitting such a pungent odor
unsanitary, to say the least

Maybe I'm
a doll in the cabinet
with cloudy glass eyes
that witness things I shouldn't
threads loose and skin cracked
lips sealed with a permanent smirk
so I cannot scream
beautiful on the outside
but haunted inside, I am

I can be
a sad clown
I blow my nose red
unable to breathe
this thick air we wade in
eyes always painted with sorrow
my body feels like a deflated balloon
at a birthday party

Sometimes I am
the cigarettes put out on my lungs
that make me heave out rancid yellow slime
exhale the smoke presented to me
as I struggle for breath
ribs snapped open in offering
to be your personal ashtray

Other days
I am a million dollar diamond
encased in glass
waiting for someone to steal me
throw me in the back of their van
and leave me for another day
only to never be touched again
but the fingerprints will forever remain

I am all of these things
an abandoned building
or an unmarked grave
and more that is yet to come
that even I am unaware of