love,
truth is baby-thin,
passed out on the hotel floor
at midnight,
with a cigarette
and seventy cents
for a ride home,
one that will only take her
two minutes
before they stop
and throw her out again.
-forget
that her breath is sour,
stained by too many nights
spent sleeping on streets,
and wishing to have hips,
to be skinny enough
to slip into the gutters
and fall away;
-forget
that she has too often
flattened herself against
the gin bottle,
dyed her pretty yellow hair
with water-colors
and cut it all off,
-forget
that she is almost always
broken, shifting,
singing herself a lullaby
that is slurred so she can sleep.
and instead, spend your days
twirling silver string
around your fingers,
reading the notches on her
spine, the kind that sticks
too far out
and is sometimes painful
to the touch.
isn't life a bitch?
she makes a note
of this question
as she is taping together
all her former sentiments
that broke in half
just the night before.
too often,
she is the one
who rips the delicate stitching
from around my ribcage,
and she tells me that it's
always better to be numb.
i agree.
forget the crack
of sunlight when it hits
your face, and that
the stars dont shine
sometimes. just know that
she is holding on,
somewhere,
an intercoastal inscription
on the edges of the sky.
and don't forget
that she can love you
too.
Author notes
words used:
water-color, breath, cigarette, hotel, flat(tened), hips, tape(-ing), lullaby, delicate, spine, intercoastal, stars, gutters, gin, crack, string, silver, numb.
hoping this gets back to being good again.
seraphim shock (formerly LiesofDevotion).
A contest entry
- the way we fall. by aanika.
990 points, ended November 24, 2008, 22 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
mmm.
Comments
-
this was stunning, love.
i loved the way you used the wordbank.
thanks for your entry! -
Stanza three is my favourite. But the whole thing was grim and gorgeous. I love poems that seem to be telling stories about characters that good very well be reflections of a person hiding inside the author themself. Excellent job.
-
I hope your character here learns to see the beauty as well as the pain in life...
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