Rough Diamonds

.violet

it's an art, mastering treks through
hallucinations and
trembling hands holding out daylilies;
your eyelashes were iced,
sugar crystals and blackberry ice cream.
we've got a bit before it gets the better of us,
take your time, i won't take mine.
before i go, here's to the kids standing in neat white lines
in front of the stadium, counting the stains
on the fronts of t-shirts, but they've got nothing on us.
they're cut up soldier brothers and those who
have courted mistakes like your significant other,
and we're star patch scars bunched up like bracelets;
hell, i don't think anyone could
possibly be prouder of it than we are,
the breath in our lungs deep, puffed out with nightmares.
oh, now you're cutting off my air supply
because in the light i look unlike anything you've ever seen.
and i suppose your knotted apologies the day after
can't sink too far because of the ice cream man,
who gave us the last of the
blackberry cones because i told him
that we would give him cigarettes in return.
he doesn't smoke, but who would
think to refuse hell in a stick?
not you, for sure: you're that kind of shiver-skin human,
cordial at day, death metal by night:
you've got the whole city choking on us, honey.
when you get me lighted, my legs can
stick out your mouth, smoking and charred
and i can say proudly that i've been ravaged by life,
that i've been taken and given back,
that i've been weighed and converted into euros
and the goddamn price tag was quadruple digits.

that's it. that's the end of the book. if you enjoyed it, let me know. if you didn't, that's fine too. don't forget to vote because i'm an attention loving fuck. thanks.