CHARACTER STUDY
I felt as though
You had written me into a dream.
Your velvet cloaked,
Red maraschino topped,
Pre-meditation on
Fate.
So she questioned utensils
That lie,
Rusting on the roads ahead,
Turning what was once a home,
Into a smoking den.
Endless attempts
At abstention
And a carbamazepine
Over-correction
Was what it was,
That led me to a search for secreted runes
Sshh.
I was always waiting on an ear,
Who, a Van Gogh
Ice-cold enigma
Would just
Listen,
Sshh.
His face was puffy,
Puppy fat
Folding like bed sheets around hospital legs,
He was fading into sleep,
Not sure how to leave,
The crazy girl who was positive his name meant something.
There was a sleeping man,
In the room next door,
And I would wait,
Violently awake,
For him to conduct the next score,
Orchestrate my fall
Chafed fingers losing grip,
Dropping me
Palimpsest
Into silent pit
Fairytale,
Memory-erased-gone.
She had needed this story
So desperately
shared,
So, he understood why
some days
She felt like her name was Laura.
I exposed my chest to this
Narcoleptic boy named James
Who had just come over to smoke a j,
With a girl
Who looked like one day she
Could have been a beauty queen,
Before this madness set in,
Of trying to make herself more
Than she feared
This seemed.
Herself
Trying to trick
Herself,
Into believing there was worth,
In death young,
Beautiful body left
pain ending,
Drug rock and roll
Death.
She was left to live though,
And it hurt,
Smacked nose into the doorframe at night;
Southern ocean wind to naked cliff-faced body,
It still hurts.
I felt as though you had written me into a dream,
But eventually I had to wake up,
Hung over from the weight of your
Brilliant, black and white lined
mind,
And survive.
This hurts like hell.
by Rebecca May