I used to be a star, now I'm just dying- and I can't even do that right.

Once we were cerulean dominos
exploding like comets onto sand castles
and sandscript writing, but now
we are just foam cap ashes.





Once we were metallic ink stains
whose breaths could create
whirlwinds and hurricanes to conceal
overturned cars smoking from stagnant ponds,
but  now I'm just vapor,
and you don't exist anymore.






Once it was possible to believe in fairytale
and sequined tiaras that promised my head that
there was something better than my
broken doll and shattered beer bottle reality,
but flames dancing through windshields and
into leather upholstery that once breathed
fucking & and flying & rib bone addictions,
has turned that to bleak skylines and rotting towers.







When I believed I actually had wings, like the hummingbirds
whose scattered limbs I found behind ventilators struggling
to grip onto breath, although their entire chest heaved
like hypothermia epidemics had swallowed their lungs,
then I'd feel my curved  calcium implants swell as if
carbon dioxide flames had trapped them too between
burning and rotary blades- sometimes that was my catharsis.






Before your ears found my throat, I'd close my eyes
and walk above the swing-set, wondering if I'd fall
but kinda hoping if my bones were broken they were
external enough, that the liquid contained in my veins
would rinse themselves out- and wash away all my stains.






When I first met you, you gave me a paper airplane, crinkled
like your freckles - and with a dilapidated wing like your eyes
always seemed to be- I thought you were trying to save me
by showing me the right trajectory it would take for me to fly,
and that night I slipped away from lipsclampedshut hands
before Football games were over and tried to catch a breeze
from the swing set beams, before anyone could catch me.






You never told me why, you chased broken kite strings
whose fabric tatters were satin and cotton candy and breakable,
into my neighborhood to watch me point my toes like
the ballerina I always wished I could be. And be there in time
to yank cracking asphalt feathers from the tanbark
and into your shoulder blades, cradled in hairline fractures.






We watched twilight fight the dusk for aestival colors
that were more like spring, and you asked me 'why
was I so obsessed with  having wings?' but all I could
tell you was silent words and elliptical tears that
lacked the eye strength to fall into your wrists.
"The paper airplane?" but I don't think you understood
how asphyxiation in lined sheet form would promise
me that maybe, just maybe, flying like paper was really possible.








You got arrested for speeding even though no
one knew how fast your breath had moved through
my body, on starlight veins and comet shot elbow
cricks- and while you pulled your earlobe anxiously,
I writhed and arched and lay gripped in drunk cages
while I clung to stories and Mermaid worlds so I
didn't have to be there, while my stomach pulsed
the echo of a childhood that was long gone.






I found lime sleeves whose hem used to drape
my  knees from neck, but who now trimmed
the pear drop burn mark on my upper thigh,
and climbing away from Cheetoh breath
my feet chased barefoot prints outside.
Since I learned at nine that even detergent
won't wash away what breakingintolittle pieces
and 'cryingletgoofme' and 'godremembermealready'
feels like- so I pressed heel to toe on satinwood
beams- and jumped as if for a second, after all
I could pretend I wasn't human, but winged and free.







My arm broke in three places and you carried me
for weeks over puddle ice and into the opening of
sleeping outside on park benches and next to
star clusters detoxing around the drugs they
always seemed to be orbiting. And for awhile
sunscreen and tripple ringed lilac trees formed
reflections in your windshield as mountain dew
steering wheels stuck to forty on kalaidescope
highways- and you wouldn't forge skin to skin
promises with me because you said "Numbing
silken navels and empty spaces would be too
violent" and you were afraid my arm wouldn't
ever heal but you were so stupid.






The only time I'd ever break is if you took away
your jaded breath from my oxygen deprived
veins, since they'd learned to depend on
your scandium and musk tinted water-
kissing and speeding physical limits
into dangerous territories as I took
back control- wasn't all I was addicted to.








August spread purple wingspans full of
bottle opening skies before frustration,
and crying till I could chug propel for
fifty three seconds, was allowed to leak
from my veins into your hips and ribs
and throat. We fucked for a thousand
moments of 'paper flying dreams' and
for undeclared wars whose bullets
'neverseemtoendbutalwayscontinue'
into new millenniums and corroded retinas.





That night exhaust littered creaking
floorboards windows, and nicotine
patches caught fire and became useless,
as my addiction to kissing found a
way to get to the sky, and cheerio galaxies-



'Damn girl,  stay flying on almost melded kites and it will be okay"
wasn't breathed but mercury infused into my vertabraes and rammed
into my shoulder blades like gasoline bullets and suddenly  I wasn't
filled with anorexic moons, and cigarette fingertips so much, anymore.




You had broken lyric eyes, and I was
pieced together of patchwork kites
whose crosspieces were littered on Highway One along
with jagged tires and 'recycled' (but really dumped cans),
but even so you asked me why I always wanted to be a
ballerina which surprised me- I thought you of all people
would grasp it in connotations or ask me why I wanted to
fly but believed all I could ever be was a grounded kite-




"Pink toes and ribbon sliced hair always have control over their knees, and stomachs, and ribs and summer rain pale shoulders instead of relying on others to piece them
together.



Or waiting for the ache of not owning their body to fade, because those icicles never melt and some fires will always be burning within ankles and clavicles.




Since I died and was reborn without wings, stamina to run, or innocence- I've never known what it was like be in control  of my own body" and you cry like you want to make my hurt go away, although its probably a chemical reaction that no one else has ever had when I've told my story. But I only told one person, and she was  married to one of him for three weeks, and arsenic 6 karat rings contain  gullibility.





--------------------------------------------------



Lighter fluid and seedlings felt their way
into my belly button and we were always
followed by insomnia once October rose
from the flames, so I told you my waking
dreams, and believed if I pushed hard enough
someone else could balance their weight over
me and exorcise my ghosts and bring rusty
aluminium hopes into the finite moments.



I told you how I used to always dream of being
six years old again and flying without connotations,
and your gums breathed 'me too' because then
it was simple, and mothers remembered their
babies because they were cute and breathing.




But I buried my chin in your neck because
I didn't know how to tell you how wrong that
was for me even though it was true and couldn't
be a lie since it was your dream- because "I only
want to be six again because then I wasn't crippled,
and that was when I didn't hate my lungs for breathing,
because then I actually wanted to live.


Snow cones burnt the yellow lines into oblivion
as it got too cold for us to sleep outside, so I
had to go to stringy laundry rooms and memoir
infected doorways that weren't even on
two stories so I could fly from their windows.
You didn't know what it meant to scotch tape
mend brakes, so the gas always ignited. You
were driving to come to me and take me to
your house so I wouldn't be overwhelmed
and hurt as much, you were going to
sneakmein because your mom was never home.


December always hated us- because we burned
like summer, and riptides curled in our kisses
just like their storm swells couldn't ever do-
snowflakes squished your wheels between
sunset skylines and pavement- and flipping
flipping flipping flipping- skidding engines
exploded and created fireworks amidst
hidden moon nights.

I saw the smoke rising from traffic lights
and lonely winter roads- and that was all it
took. I ran ran ran to you, with my eyes
closed because you once told me if I did that
tomorrow wouldn't ever come, and I could
save the moment, however I wanted to change it,
but I haven't been a fast runner for eight years now.

Dehydration and addictions and fucking was ripping
their-selves to flames as my feet stood freeze burning
at the edge of yellow lines and old Toyota headlights
perpendicular to the deflectors on the road- overturned.
Breathing and loving and crying and broken kites danced
ashes to rubber bands to every bone in my body, and
I didn't even cry- because I still believed I could find you.

They thought they were taking me home but you knew
better- so I climbed onto the top of the swings again,
because I needed control, but you weren't there to
hold me anymore and even though I hated you from
stopping me the first time, I  wished you were
around to fuck,kiss, breath and halfway hate for a moment
or forever, whichever one ended later- I closed my eyes
but I guess I forgot  how to fly a long time ago.


But I was able to fly like paper- and all the carousels
spun to a stop as the tanbark imprinted my skin-
and lime green t shirts lapped at my hips as sorrow
breeds inches from the heels to ankles- I wanted
to be nothing since you were incinerated.

And I've always been afraid of fire, and burning, and
warmth so I didn't know how to burn like you- but
I tried the next best thing- and failed at that too.

Maybe I'm just like paper- recyclable to be scarred
with ink stains and what could be love or just
fucking for numbing,  so at least I could damn myself to Hell
so one day I'd have somewhere to go. But I'm reusable
and full of dilapidated Ferris wheel eyes and airplanes
comet close to crashing.