sixteenth-notes

This city is yawning before me, but I'm not tired.

We screamed this primeval scream built on a base of freedom, raised from beauty of a dying breed, and threw our heads back to laugh or cry, I'm not entirely sure which. But the scream shook the golden sunset, bringing it to its knees.

The smell of cigarette smoke in the air in a tavern that changes names often,a bar cursed because of a girl who died of a drug overdose in the basement, we put a few coins in the jukebox;chose __ngel Band_ by Johnny Cash and sat down at the bar,ordered a soda, you wanted a whiskey on the rocks.We saw the coal miner who moved here from West Virginiaknocking back liquor like I drink sweet tea.No one asked why he was so solemn today.It was warm. It was relatively quiet.To anyone else, this place could feel sinister.But to us, it was freedom. It was a hiding place.No one was ever here long enough to know us.And we liked it that way.

Moving on should be a required high school classbecause Lynchburg is determined to make me forget.

He tilted my chin up and I swear those lips are magic. Witchcraft. Sorcery. Whatever it is in those lips, it__ addictive. Unassailable. I had to have more. More of this feeling of being wanted.

Wrap him up in floral wallpaper, wishing the envelopes I seal were his lips, leaving hickeys like stamps to show where he's been.

I__e never been with a boy who hasn__ seen me naked. It__ always the squeaky futon, bear-it-all, turn-off-the-lights quickstep. Don__ chalk it up to __addy issues.__aybe I__ sick of keeping private parts private. I don__ want rainwater secrets on my lips, tasting of __on__ make too much noise_. October__ dust in my lungs, maybe I don__ want bits of four AM lingering in my subconscious. Smokers breathe in fire, coat their insides in ash. Is that suicide or arson? Listen to me, listen to me. I__ alive. I__ ALIVE.I__ naked and bruised, but I__ alive. I__ not a piece of fruit. Don__ press into my flesh, looking for soft spots. My whole body is tender and rotten, but I__ alive.I__ alive and just because you can see it all, doesn__ mean you know it all

I drank from the crisp mountain stream, tasting filtered sky with a mossy undertone. I__e never understood how being loved fully could change your entire perspective of the world. I only ever understood the wistfulness of it, and the longing and the frothy, violent bits. The mixed up, rained on parts. The escaped bits that smudge and bleed through. Slowly, I am coming to terms with how vulnerable I am to you, flat on my back like a submissive wolf pup. Daisy petals line your eyelashes, juice of a nectarine flavors your tongue. The side of your mouth twitches, hazy dreamscapes overtaking your mind while we bathe in the glorious autumn devastation.

Is it bad to like the way the scars look on my skin? Oh, the way they feel under my hands. My body__ protecting itself, saying, __o, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.

And then it changed. I wasn't letting him anymore. He was taking, pawing, grabbing. I pushed, I cried out, I squirmed, but like I said it's a shitty game and he didn't feel like playing by the rules anymore.

I'm nineteen tree rings and mashed acorns stop up my veins when I can't clot. Oh god, you beautiful person, I'll let you lick the salt off of my tattoos as if they were wounds, wounds made of ink and stories.

I'd felt the pop of the needle sliding into my veins, like a fang into flesh. I'd been enveloped in the golden haze where nothing is wrong even when everything is falling apart. A dance with a hypodermic fiend, my hands in the claws of a vulture.

We are paint streaked runners,deafened by the cries of all the sad people. It's a powerful sound that practically yanks the tears right out of you. Sometimes, you just can't help but feel like a very smallclam ina verybig ocean.

You're elegance in a misunderstood form. Crystal quartz in a world of platinum. Oh, my dizzy boy, there's a fire in you that I use to warm my hands on chilly mornings.