chiaroscuro

there's something about girls who wear ragged shorts and drown in puffy coats who roller blade to class and scrape their knees and laugh through lipsticked teeth there's something about girls who glide across snow to sing with whistles and shrieks who beckon with their eyes "come hither, come here" they say through their ringed fingers there's something about girls who wear metal and spit fire hair like stripped bark and stars smoking on the tears of the withered and grinding their boot heel on the butts of whimpering cigarettes there's something about girls with their library of collections their small eyes full of world's wonder and the borrowed curiosity of the old trekking in muddy sneakers towards the gaping library doors there's something about girls who forge on a determined path towards an age of weightlessness where people stand on soapboxes not to preach but to reach for the folded black umbrella above there

On the outside I'm looking in Prying into something broken I hold a single candle Against the backdrop of a thousand fires The crypt is filled The mourners gather I stand here with a single candle On the outside looking in The sky vomits rain Drenching the banners of black A few raindrops splatter my cheeks Under the guise of tears My single candle sputters in the wind A single smile, a single greeting Exchanged in the burgundy hallway A single candle to a thousand bonfires Her match has gone out Choked to death by the vomiting rain I am on the outside looking in Mourning a death that once smiled at me.

that heart-colored galaxy surpassing the rich raging tapestry throwing it all into the stars like trust, like hope, like resolve we bounce from constellation to constellation wishing and seeing and singing to unsung icy melodies that pick at the frost of the heart speaking to the inner flame in our chest rattling like the tail of a snake giggling like the child entwined around your knees wailing like the bone flute carved from death sleeping like the monstrous dragon around the mountain we think in dreams and we laugh at reality bowing every ten steps to bless our path groveling as the pantheon throws the dice of life aces on the table, and you fold unpeel yet another memo, unfold another paper heart and reveal your lucky numbers, fortune favors the wise stand on your own two feet and seize unkind fate and wrestle it until the earth dissolves into craft glitter the last winding road you should take leads back to me standing under the iron bar lanterns flickeri