plum-colored lipstick is not hard to come by but i buy it secondhand anyway, from girls and women and boys and fluid ladies that have used the rougher parts of their fingers to weave little baskets out of the metals in my chest. everyone always asks me "sister sister, how'd'ya getchya lips so slick?" even though they know as well as i do that my mouth's gloss is natural; a product of their real sister or mother or aunty, too.
it's a dazzling existence — sappho's daughter, a velvet brown mistress! i'm coveted and a covetess; a flyaway kind of baby who's heart is made from bone-dry sticks that ignite without a single match. these are sentiments that make me cry, because i really do love everyone, even the men, who regard me with heavy-lidded insecurity. how do you tell your princess she can't hang out with her friends because she might take her hostage; wrap her arms around her like the python she is, she'll suck the life out you, babydoll, stay with me tonight — and it makes me wonder whether he's ever thought, how's it feel on her end? how's it to be feared and avoided? my existence is dazzling and bitter, equally divided.
sometimes i peel off one or two layers of my skin and, in my red-muscled glory, pay visits to every woman who's ever accepted me into her home. i bury flowers in her bed (a casket); tie strand of hair into silk braids (nooses), and pepper kisses along her knees and elbows (bullet wounds for babydoll).
i didn't mean to kill her. pieces of myself die whenever a memory of her spirit comes upons me in the night. but this is the only way we can be together, in this taboo world of standardized love.
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A/N: idk Why i wrote this or What i was going through but i wrote this in march so i must have been feeling Something Fierce
YOU ARE READING
OPEN-BRAIN SURGERY
Poetryshoved a needle in my brain and now my head won't stop bleeding
