Lest My Outstretched Palms Betray Me

prose poem

A superstitious insomniac counting her stars by prime numbers, breathing in the last pulse of your old drunken thunder. My lungs float, pink balloons, strings sighing in slumber…

Your shadow couldn’t help but stare at my false feather lashes, fishnet tights stained with my old man’s rotting ashes. Broken glass starlight, past and future in flashes. We bare-knuckle boxed for the spot by your side. You put baby in the corner, but she didn’t get dolled up to hide. “How will he feel if I’m not where he left me?” your shadow wept in a puddle on the concrete. But you were walking away, I had no time to think, I called back, “He won’t miss you if he’s looking at me!” But nobody told me, we only get the one. Forgive me, forgive me, it was either You or The Sun. I was blinded by the light, and your soul weighs a ton.

We kept it up for years, long-con of the heart, baroque folie à deux. We dreamt jagged, brutal ways a coffin could squeeze two. Slowly I became your most addictive souvenir. And your glasses, and your car keys, and your wildest slack-jawed fear. I kept a doomed eye on the comfort you gave me, always insisting it meant something less hazy; to be Your Shadow, to follow, blindly, lazy, lest my outstretched palms rebel and betray me.

One day a shadow just wasn’t enough. You wanted me real. Original sin, flesh and blood. I hadn’t considered that we’d have to grow up. You threw nasty words my way, whistling bullets, emotional shrapnel. I knew the best way to hurt you: stare you down and cackle. Scraped knees carried my shame to the coast. I begged the ocean to erase us, the sacred body I trust most. The Catholic in me jumped out and she begged to be forgiven, for all the gorgeous fake smiles that she could never truly live in.

Blood dripped from snarling lips and you faded out beyond me. I stood there on the shore, barefoot in February. Once upon a time men wrote songs about me, the only thing was, I wanted to sing. Here, taste the iron, the scarlet flowing through my voice. It’s staining every word, we repent but don’t rejoice. Here, I’ll open up wide, a psycho-violent crimson smile. I tried to be benign but that just wasn’t my style. Here, take my canines, they were always yours to keep. Your initials in the enamel, forsaken songs hummed under the cover of sleep.

You once strung such tender words together, sealed in envelopes for me. I’d let them all loose, they would roam dozing houses, seeking bodies for heat. It was all too much, I confess! I confess! Who was it that told me, “You can’t live inside someone else’s chest.” I took my heart down to the river and judged, damned her to the hell of a perpetual grudge; to stare vacant and helpless in the face of loving and being loved. You filled your pockets with rocks and blamed it all on me; Get your sorry ass back here! You don’t get to die at sea!

But it’s fine, I’ll accept it, the You I Knew is gone.

Fuck it. Turn it up. They’re still playing our song.