down the road there are girls who look like china dolls and curl their hair in the mornings and in the afternoons & laugh themselves silly at openmouthed compliments and peach pink bruises of blush, beautiful girls with glitter embroidered into their very teeth, flower petals embedded under their skin.
in tino she likes to walk with her head rooted upright & keeps her feet on the tightrope, lying about wanting and not wanting, lying about not looking at the pleated skirts, lying about not dreaming of laundered and ironed and folded hearts & in the night her thoughts spill from her arms like basketfulls of rotten fruit and the gravity flips itself, so her wishes fall out like water raining from an upturned goldfish bowl: and they sing of blue hands and shaking words, and everything she tastes stings of the reduction of lost friends. and her eyes ghost over pastel pink and long legs and fluttering eyelashes and she wants to be them, wants their lives, and her heart clenches itself inside out and shatters like stained glass.
tino is poisoned doilies and lace made of spiderwebs, red lips hiding sharpened teeth, pink stilettos dripping in blood. her skin freezes itself and the smile becomes plastered & practiced and now she's porcelain too, like all the other girls.
she can't help it; it must be the city polluting her veins. she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy it.
