Kaleidoscopic Prison Diaries -edited-

Girl, you sit on desktops,
cloistered in denial, amused by small things.
Girl, girl with wonky teeth and studded eyes
and leather-jacket hair, you sit in the middle row;
you sit behind the boy with good grades and higher ambitions,
and hope you will drown in his cacophony.

Girl, you and I are not so very different—
we staple ghosts to our faces and paint our words
with bruises, and haunting melodies, and Pied Piper sin.

Here's to never being seen, we say,
and we stuff our words in glass cages, an aviary
where we always forget the keys.

Girl, you are not a rebel, or the monotonous humdrum
of a fly buzzing against glass when the window is shut.
You are the tear in the lampshade, the chink in the curtains,
the dust climbing rays of light, little paws dancing golden.
You are tangents, and social anxiety,
and sitting in the rain without an umbrella
because you like the feel of rainwater when it rushes down your back—
better, you say, than snakes slinking down your skin.

You are big ideas and big dreams and a voice
not loud enough to expel them from your lungs; but it takes
condition for storm clouds to form, and time
for it to rain. You write litanies to optimism,
and hide your face for fear people will see it
and know who you are, that they will see
your judgements as prejudice, and your actions
as malice against their ghost-written songs.

Girl, you have never understood the point of kaleidoscopes,
if only ever to see things in symmetry.
And that's all right—I never did either. What is the point
of trying to understand the beauty of a reflection atop
a reflection, atop
a reflection,
if the colours never inundate one another
with their sorrow? The point of kaleidoscopes,
in real life, I never understood—I see, instead,
my palm, upturned, towards the sky, I see
flowers blooming in the white patches between my veins:
lianas climbing clouds, a network of vines&roses
and wine&roses.

Sometimes, I see you sitting in the middle row,
behind the boy with good grades and higher ambitions—
and I wonder if you see the lianas, too.
I wonder if someone taught you, or if you learnt,
the way I did, that the only way to get paper to feel anything
is to tear your nerves from your skin, strip them
away, like branches on an ageing tree, sagging skin—
hoist them up like suspension cables, and paste them,
with german glue, in crooked lines on crepe paper;
a collage, a simulacrum, disassembly
for things that would, perhaps, have been otherwise left unsaid.

Here's to being heard, we say,
but never seen.

And yet, I see you.
You sit atop desktops,
bending low, shielding your face
as if that will stop moths from being drawn to your light;
Girl, everyone is like this. Everyone.
Some people are lanterns on bumpy roads in Victorian England,
others lighting sleek ferraris up in a cage,
or coughing against museumwaxdollsandpaint.
Girl, you are disassembly. I see your eyes cupping the sun, clouds hanging low
above its golden, glossy sheen. Your lashes
are greasy motorcycle handlebars,
your hands are figure eights, upended bookcases,
twisted hearts on rainy afternoons.
You create magic.
Revel in it.

Girl, sometimes, I see you in me,
wonky teeth and glazed eyes and hesitant glances.
You are not special, perhaps, in a way that prepossess good grades
with regard to higher ambitions—or special in a way
that commands curiosity, and breeds trust,
and coaxes loyalty from around corners—
but you are special, because you too
are kaleidoscopic.

[Between the mirrors is a hesitancy to be reflected:
     light swirls between the beads, light
                                escapes the carpal tunnel.]