Counting Change
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It’s funny, how her head is filled with change. Not the revolutionized, forth-coming change. The kind that sweeps over barren lands like a leaf-filled breeze. No, it wasn’t the kind of picket sign and stand-your-ground kind of change.
Her head was filled with pennies and quarters and Canadian coins. She’d nod and everything would rattle with a quiet, almost invisible misery. She could feel the pressure behind her eyes. A thick and hazy exhaustion that coated everything thickly and almost blindingly. She began to feel the weight of the change as she laid her head down to sleep.
____________At night the stars drip-dropped and fell from the sky. The razor ____________ finger-nail edge of the moon caught an edge of the night, ripping it ____________down like torn fabric. Glitter and silver rained down and paved the ____________streets.
The morrow of her bones liquefied and streamed down from her fingertips. Her head heavy and sunk to her chest, her gentle spiraling goes unnoticed. Everyday she dresses, starting with woolen socks and long sleeves shirts to hide to her heart, and dreams her head filled with revolutionaries. Carrying guns and wearing red, brass-plated coats. She dreams her head full of aneurysms and blood from corpses and failures and the painlessly removed veins of lambs. She’d give anything to feel light and blithe again. She’d give anything to not feel like a goddamn piggy bank.
____________Nights come early and cold. Frigid and unforgiving. Sometimes she ____________ opens her curtains and let’s the wind curl in and clamp a hand down ____________on her lungs. She can feel the crushing cold deep in her ribcage. ____________Imagining what it would feel like to have her blood crystallize in her ____________heart. Blood swift and curling like smoke, trickled down her forearm. ____________She’ll wake up crusted and coated in it.
She lost her purity long ago. To the rusted and tarnished thoughts in her head. Her teeth fall out one by one. Her hair braided and her hearing corrupted. Her joints lose their mobility. Sometimes she wakes up with a dull ache behind her eyes. Her spinal cord is shrinking and bending. She feels caught in the wind. Her eyes are the color of pennies, but she can’t stay awake. Her blue-laden eyelids can’t stay open. It’s a slow succumbing. Slow and careful. She denies it and writes poetry on her arms. She wears long sleeves and just counts the change accumulated inside her skull.
____________Out here, she can’t see the constellations. With just glitter and the ____________far away remnants of silver, what is she supposed to hold onto? The ____________razor-sharp tongue of the moon? Or the shivering shred of night that ____________too soon gives way to day?
Her head was filled with pennies and quarters and Canadian coins. She’d nod and everything would rattle with a quiet, almost invisible misery. She could feel the pressure behind her eyes. A thick and hazy exhaustion that coated everything thickly and almost blindingly. She began to feel the weight of the change as she laid her head down to sleep.
____________At night the stars drip-dropped and fell from the sky. The razor ____________ finger-nail edge of the moon caught an edge of the night, ripping it ____________down like torn fabric. Glitter and silver rained down and paved the ____________streets.
The morrow of her bones liquefied and streamed down from her fingertips. Her head heavy and sunk to her chest, her gentle spiraling goes unnoticed. Everyday she dresses, starting with woolen socks and long sleeves shirts to hide to her heart, and dreams her head filled with revolutionaries. Carrying guns and wearing red, brass-plated coats. She dreams her head full of aneurysms and blood from corpses and failures and the painlessly removed veins of lambs. She’d give anything to feel light and blithe again. She’d give anything to not feel like a goddamn piggy bank.
____________Nights come early and cold. Frigid and unforgiving. Sometimes she ____________ opens her curtains and let’s the wind curl in and clamp a hand down ____________on her lungs. She can feel the crushing cold deep in her ribcage. ____________Imagining what it would feel like to have her blood crystallize in her ____________heart. Blood swift and curling like smoke, trickled down her forearm. ____________She’ll wake up crusted and coated in it.
She lost her purity long ago. To the rusted and tarnished thoughts in her head. Her teeth fall out one by one. Her hair braided and her hearing corrupted. Her joints lose their mobility. Sometimes she wakes up with a dull ache behind her eyes. Her spinal cord is shrinking and bending. She feels caught in the wind. Her eyes are the color of pennies, but she can’t stay awake. Her blue-laden eyelids can’t stay open. It’s a slow succumbing. Slow and careful. She denies it and writes poetry on her arms. She wears long sleeves and just counts the change accumulated inside her skull.
____________Out here, she can’t see the constellations. With just glitter and the ____________far away remnants of silver, what is she supposed to hold onto? The ____________razor-sharp tongue of the moon? Or the shivering shred of night that ____________too soon gives way to day?