november, and my cuticles are bleeding.
we threw rocks at birds and watched
their honeysuckle mouths knocked
clean off. birds don't even have real mouths, in the real world
but i am always extrapolating.
who cares about the real world when you're here.
gaps in your teeth remind me of the wide
sweep of cemetery song and salt
hand warmers. there is a woman
who lives down the street with ten
thousand wind chimes and they all
sing in your voice, calling me back
across the railroad tracks
to a home where you were buried and
long gone and to a home
where my existence is a myth.
that's why i loved fables when i grew up
because the kids never seemed to care
their flesh and blood would weave
bedtime stories of warning and tall tales
told to keep darkness away.
you and i were stories,
anecdotes our mothers still tell each other and laugh at.
i watch from miles away, phases
are not phases but state changes, you came
and expanded me and scrambled my molecules into whatever i am now-
girls only like girls in songs
we weren't allowed to listen to
and procreation was only ever
between opposites in books
we were forced to read. they
murdered you in cold blood and
forced me away in heat and disbelief
and told you like a myth, a warning,
something that had never existed in the first place. we weren't real. in their eyes, we never were. my cuticles are still bleeding, coagulated into purple clots of silent witness. blood sees everything and sings of it.
