sometimes ghosts plant daisies.

xiv. we are weak; murderers.

she tells me that we're the same person
because we've never had our hearts torn.
we've been the ones to cut them with
small silver daggers that we keep in our pockets,
we've been the ones to bruise them and scrape them
with our sharp cat nails til our fingernails
are slick with blood.

she tells me that we're perfect for each other
but i think we'll kill each other eventually
because we are a even match
and we'll go out for blood
and scrape each other's hearts with
sharp cat nails till one of us bleeds.

she tells me that the other men that she's had
were weak and (it's silent but it's implied that i am too)
i tell her that the other girl's i've had were weak too,
but the truth is our hearts are actually pitiful little things,
hemophiliacs
that are protected with biting words and sly grins,
if they get one little cut, the blood won't clot and
i know we'll end up dead,
smearing blood across each other's lips as we kiss.

she tells me i'm a killer and scrapes her sharp cat nails
through my hair till my scalp bleeds
but i laugh and flip her over and burn
cigarettes on the inside of her thighs
and she giggles and pushes me onto our shitty couch
and kisses me till i see stars.

xvi. tuesday nights in michigan

there's something about the green of her eyes
like broken sea glass or a fallen leaf in nyc during rush hour
that makes you lean forward and stare a bit,
she's laughing, a high pretty thing
and you hear her voice, this lilt in it
like she's got a grandmother from ireland,
her hair is fiery red like ariel from that disney movie
you used to watch with your little sister,
she's beautiful and young and you fall a little bit in love.

under my fingernails there is grime
and under my eyes, there is a thin coat of coal dust
that will never leave no matter how hard i scrub.
my throat is coated with tar and my lungs have
shriveled and crumpled, dyed black and deep purple.

~unfinished.

xviii. she'll reach heaven one day

she kept pennies in her pockets and
fed them to the birds that cooed
the city awake in bryant park.
she would dip them in a cocktail
of ammonia and green food coloring
because the birdies liked green the best.
sometimes she'd put a 1932 penny to her cracked lips
and taste the copper to make sure she was still alive.

her brother used to carve birds in balsa foam that
he kept on his bedroom window and once she
tried to copy him, stealing his x-acto knife and
a piece of yellow foam but when she dug the blade into
the balsa, the noise stabbed her ears and she ended up
carving into her body instead.

she made mountains out of her collarbones
and sometimes when she was alone in her room,
she'd reach behind her back and draw wings between
her shoulder blades,
determined to finish carving that bird.

xix. there were jewels in the coffin

You told me you once saw two skeletons kissing
and you whispered into my ear that you saw them as corpses,
mangled and bloody, shredded skin and porcelain white bones
that glowed when you unearthed them from their country-side graves.
You told me they were tangled together, bones upon bones upon bones,
empty eye sockets and tilted skull to fit together
in a kiss that will last in the space between infinity.

xx.

i
swallowed
butterflies
to
feel
ghosts
flutter
in
my
stomach.

xxi. once upon a time

my momma always told me to stay on the path
to grandma's or the wolf will get me,
and my momma used to take thick twine braided together
like sailor knots and whip me with them till my blood
dyed my riding hood red so when i left,
i left for good.

i slept on mattresses filled with dirt and rocks
and ate the berries that grew on bushes taller than jack's stalk
and when i met the wolf, i realized that he wasn't eve's snake
but he was a beast pulled to beautiful things and that i was a beautiful thing.

but i was also cursed, so grandma put me in a tower
and left me no scissors so my hair grew and grew
and the foxes and rabbits that crept out of alice's rabbit hole
would throw me rampion because grandma didn't give me food
and grandma wanted me to starve. i was the keeper of secrets and
the deer began to whisper my name as raziel raziel rapunziel rapunzel
and the wolf forgot who i was.

the sun was hidden in hades and only came out for half the year
and suddenly i was no longer rapunzel of the long hair but
i was pale, snow white with lips glossed like blood.
persephone would be released and color would bleed into my skin again
and i lost myself down alice's hole once more.

finally, my prince came and tried to rescue me from my tower but
the clock struck 12 and the wolf ate him up,
leaving behind a pair of boots.
i slipped them on and stole an axe from the
huntsman to cut my hair
and set out to find the wolf,
my red riding hood still warm.

i found a little cabin in the woods and ate the porridge that was too hot,
the porridge that was too cold and the
porridge that was just right for breakfast,
then slept in the too big, too small and perfectly sized bed
and the bears were never angry,
just fascinated by my golden locks.
i killed them all and had stew for lunch.

i stayed on the path to grandma's and
dropped bits of bread on the ground so i wouldn't
get lost but the hungry birds ate it up and
i found myself at the witch's house.
i liked her candy much more than the three bear's porridge
and ate all i could.
the witch was a cannibal but so was i
and i killed her too and had meat for dinner.

finally, i found the beast, the wolf and
he asked for my love but i cut him open
looking for my prince but the wolf
was the prince and the prince was dead
so i filled his stomach with stones,
dropped him in the river bed
and left my fairy tale ending to drown among the fish.

Spoiler

okay so I know this needs a lot of work but I like it.

xxii. the little town where time stood still

we got those pots and pans for two bucks, real cheap
at the flea market where you'd find
soda for fifty cents, moth-eaten clothing and starving dogs,
with bare ribs and bared teeth.

but i think the steel wool that momma
used to scratch clean the stainless steel
pans ran dry and went up
in a flame when momma doused herself in gasoline
and burned the house upside down,
the wool shining like lightning, a flash of red, then blue
then crystal white.

i've got words like a magician that want
to spill out of my mouth like a card trick,
look i've found the ace of hearts
and there's a rabbit foot in your bag
and rose petals behind your ear

but my throat is clogged up,
like a dirty sink with rice and grime
and upside down roach corpses stuck in the drain

and each time i cough and spit out
like a baseball player chewing tobacco,
the grey sludgy tar only shakes in my throat
and bits of it, bits of these dirty, mean words
(slutbitchassfuckwhoreshit)
shoot out like a bullet to the temple.

i'm all written out and i think
it's kind of sad that i used to take words
and mold them into meaning for myself
but now i do for the praise of others,
like a 5 year old at a dance show,
in primer and mascara and pretty pink lipstick,
curtsying for the empty crowd.

~

i got a job at a movie theater today,
the place is a graveyard and the owner/manager
is a 45 year old Guiyanese guy with two kids
and a dead wife. He's pretty nice and my new
co-workers are an 18 year old Hispanic girl
who works full time, studying for her GED with her books
hidden under the popcorn machine
and a 30 year old tall white guy named Tom who
seems a bit like a serial killer
to me.

xxiv. iv's, cold sheets and other hospital memorabilia.

someone is holding a flame to my throat
and my lungs ache like an internal phantom limb
and i know my the space above my ribs are empty,
because the doctor's cut out my heart when they realized
i wasn't alive.

i need you to keep lying to me,
because i'm only human,
when you're not.

xxv. swimming in the moroccan coast.

(cover your mouth and breathe through your pores,
then dive, dive into this)

i am a liar,
i don't know why but i cannot taste the truth
on my lips and stomach acid stings the lining of my
intestines whenever i say i swear.

fun fact: when i was 13, a boy licked his lips,
told me i was lovely and shoved his hands between my legs
to see whether i would scream.
i didn't.

(but he made me scream later when my back was sweaty
against his car's leather seats and his breaths were
pants against my collarbone.)

fun fact: i am lying to you. i am a virgin,
but i'm a rapist because i ripped myself
out of my mother's womb and i think the doctor's
knew it then, that i was an aberration, because
i didn't cry when i was born.

i am lying to you. i cannot remember the day i was born.
that's ridiculous.

fun fact: i knew a girl who fed pennies to birds
and died one day when she couldn't muster up the
courage to fly .

i am lying to you. she didn't die. she just crumpled into herself
like wilted flower petals, withered and brown at the edges.

fun fact: i burned honey today and it smelled like
christmas because christmas smells like little mistakes
and something sweet that's hardened in the center.
the pan was black like my skin and black like my heart
(or something utterly cliche like that)

of course, i am lying. i am arabian, golden tan and
i share my blood with only 5 people in the world,
none of which are members of my family.

again, i am lying because they are my family but they are not.
i'm not really sure either, but you'll have to keep swimming along.

let me tell you a story: there is a tree with my name on it
in the small woods on the brink of bouznika, a gulf city in morocco.
by that tree, i coughed blood and a boy eyed me with wolf eyes
and this time, he licked my lips and didn't wait for me to scream.

time stops and i think the clocks slide down the wall like syrup,
fold over themselves like jelly and tick-tock their way to an explosion.

i am lying to you but why would you believe that?
i was lying about being a liar. a paradox of sorts.
i keep secrets like raziel but i'm no angel.

maybe i'm a liar after all.

xxvi. the neighbors

he tortures slugs,
dotting bits of salt to see them shrivel and writhe
and she feeds Alkaseltzer to grey pigeons
to watch their stomachs explode.

They are a lovely couple.

xxvii. exorcism

love is a possessive language
of you are mine and i
am yours.

i am not a slave, thank you.

xxviii. the beginning of after

you were drawing me last night with a small pool of
spilled ink and your splotched finger tips
on crisp sketching paper.
you spotted the skin covering my ribs
with your finger prints and i remember hearing
the alley cats that live between the condo buildings
on our block mewling like babies because it was
pouring. you told me to
put on my rain boots and come outside
because it is time to dance. i was slipping
them on and your phone rang and she was
wondering when your shift was ending so you could go
home.
you promised to call me later and you left.

i swore to myself that last night would be the last time
but i keep promises just as well as you.

too many people fall in love with me and
it's made me indifferent like I am immune
like love is a disease and I've taken the vaccine
but you though, you've never loved me and
last week when I drank too much sugar juice
and I said you were beautiful, you told me I was drunk.
I don't even think I like you very much but with
immunization comes side effects and I think crazy
must be one of them. tomorrow you'll come over again
and hug me tight and smell liquor on me and you will do
that thing where you take a step back and realize I am the same.