Rosso Emerald Crimson
Lady
They say I'm lucky. They say you should keep me alive and I will bring good luck, but if you keep me alive forever how is that lucky for me? If I never die, what will become of me? This dress will be tattered. My skin will sag and turn thick and rotten. My arms won't lift things. My head will droop. The sky will eventually ignore me. And so will the sun and all the other stars. Yet I will still be here. Lucky for all of you. Unlucky for me. Breath will be my greatest unluck. It will enter me and exit me. It will grow tired of having to keep me alive. Air will want younger, more beautiful bodies to inflate. My lungs will yearn to resign, but because I'm so lucky they won't. They can't. I am forced to keep on breathing. I am forced to keep on living even though I want to die. I am the inchworm of immortality. I am struggling along some sidewalk and every shoe that steps just misses me. I look up at the giant sycamores, the human beings who are walking everywhere, and I wonder why one of them won't just crush me. I am not an inchworm. I am a different bug. When I land on them, they are fascinated with me for a moment. When they no longer want me crawling across their shoulders or sitting on a knee, they flick me with their fingers into the fields. But I never die. I just fly through the air until my wings are cracked and brittle. Until my body simply becomes the property of gravity. And I land in the dirt. I don't crawl. I can't fly. But I won't die. This is what we do to beauty. This is how we treat the pretty bugs. We make them immortal until they wish they were dead.
Only So
Many Years
You live in the twisted years that others have piled on top of you. And yet you are not as old as that. You are not as old as the hurt you carry. The pain you feel. You are much younger. And yet the universe which is very cold and very big doesn't notice the discrepancy. Someone wrapped their hands around you like their hands are a timeline. And they stopped the clocks that should have told your fingers and toes that you were supposed to get older. That’s why you didn't grow. Your walls and your floors got smaller, but you never could fill them. Your building was never much larger than a treehouse. That's where he put you. Up in the tree. The tree was so busy growing itself that it didn't have time for you. It was hard. The bark hurt like the callused fingers of a grown man. The tree let you fall into the bathtub, and that's where you fell and fell. It was as if the bathtub drain was tiny but not so small that you couldn't fit through it. You disappeared into the plumbing. Even when you felt that you were lost, a clog in the copper arteries, The brute hands pulled you out. They would save you every time. But we are given only so many years by the universe, and he made you borrow them from the future and use them so young. He stole them. He took your years like they were hard candies in a porcelain bowl. Even though he was only supposed to take one, he took them all by the handful. And so you are out of them. You're out of candy, and you are out of years. And the only thing you have left is the fire on your head. It's the only thing that is still a part of you. But it is an angry fire. It could destroy a thousand men. But you are empathic. You keep every last tendril to yourself. The fire on your head could burn a village of men, but you save it for your own destruction only.
Sometimes the sky is custard. It is a dessert that not everyone enjoys, but she enjoys it. She takes a spoon to the clouds and she smiles. She gets her fill. The sun is a chef, and he is proud of what he's made. She understands his genius. She is glad that they are friends. It is the time of day when one often thinks about being in the middle of things. It's the time when you swim out into the lake so far that there's no point in going back. So you kick and you spread your arms and you make your way to the other shore. It is the time when you are reading a book and you realize you've come to the exact center. You open the book's jaws and flatten them on the table. You see the pages flutter up like so many loose hairs in the middle of a windy day. And now you know you can't stop. You've made it this far. And you swim through the book like it's a lake until you get to the last word. The last piece of punctuation. And then it's done. She wasn't satisfied, but she wasn't discontent. She had come to a point in her life when her childhood was still so close, but she could count enough years that she realized she was allowed to simply think of it “fondly.” She had written enough of the paragraph that it was no longer a chore to finish it. She leaned her head on her hand, and she thought about how many words it would take to finish everything. Her mother was far away. Her mother was no longer her mother to be honest. She was another woman. She was a woman just like a professor or her doctor. She felt that her mother's voice had gotten softer inside her head. And now the voice sounded more like a song. She could harmonize with it for the first time. She and her mother could sing about the books and the lake and the sentences that they both use to talk to each other about their lives and everything else frivolous or important.
The Walls
of Night
I can hear the night time calling me. His voice is low and steady like the humming of the crickets or the spinning of the moon. The night time is genius. His darkness only hides how deep his mind is. He whispers to me for hours. He is enchanting. He pries open my sleep and climbs into my head. He finds me so easy to maneuver. Just a few words and a few pictures and I’m dreaming about the things that frighten me. I’m dreaming about the things I desire the most. I am dreaming about dreaming, and I am dreaming about him. He would seduce me. I try to make myself winsome for him. I know he's no good. A narcissist. All my friends tell me. But I ignore them because after all he is the night. He could make love to any sleepy girl, but he's choosing me. He's wooing me. I don't think I deserve it, but I feel very pretty when he wraps his dark arms around me. Sometimes he crushes me. I can feel how strong he is, but I don't mind. He knows my name. It is the name that I love to respond to because he says it in his voice, and his voice is so persuasive. I cannot possibly explain what it's like to have the night say your name. It's like a bird’s wings. It's like a shot of medicine. And it makes the blood in my veins rattle and cry and call out. He arouses my blood, and I cannot sit still for the moon. What can my family say? What can anyone say? Who doesn't crave the night? Even if you're terrified, you still want him. He can corrupt anyone. The night collapses my retina, and I am no fan of the sun. I wouldn’t know how to hear him. The night tells me dirty secrets about the sun. Things that most people don't know. I keep it quiet. I will never betray the night. Because other than being lost in the night, there's nothing worse than being scorned by him. When the night turns his back on you, the evening hours turn to fire. They turn to blood. And the walls that once were so comforting, the walls of the night that once held you like a vertical coffin so that you could stand with your feet barely touching the ground, those walls become a menace. They become an assault. And you are the victim of a crime. Only no one's going to care because you were the girl that loved the night. And now the night no longer loves you. Screaming does nothing. What can anyone do? How can anyone possibly help? The night has left you and your world is a dangerous and quiet place. The only consolation is that you’ll never be in the dark again because the sun is so much bigger than the moon. He’s too busy to notice how the night trails after him. He’ll shine on you despite your poor choice in lovers. You can wear pretty dresses again. Cut your hair short if you like. You can care about color once more. The sun always forgives a girl with a milky wide smile. He can open your eyes so that you can see Athena and the wisdom of light without a single cricket or firefly.
Look
So Still
I am endlessly endless. My motion is a motion that happens so often. It's like I'm sitting still. And at some point it's probably true. There are times when I am moving in so many different ways that I am moving against my movement, and so I'm not moving at all. And the motion is emotion. That's what sparks it all. Because inside of me, everything is moving. Every thought. Every image. Every memory. All of it tosses together like a cruise ship turning upside down. Or a pair of dogs fighting in the street. The things that make me me are tearing at each other and ripping each other to shreds. And all of it is noisy. And all of it is wet and messy. And my insides are a revolution. The streets of me are lined with angry protesters. Every one of them is angry at the quiet mayor of this sad city. Apparently I am the oppressor. My thoughts and my emotions would have me overthrown. They will yank down the statues that my parents erected for me. And they will burn the flag that has been my security blanket since I was born. It's a tumult. It's chaos. It's a New Year's Eve party in the middle of Times Square when the temperature is below zero and the police have all decided to go home. And yet I can sit here and look so still. Like the wings of a hummingbird. It's as if they don't exist. The demonstrators inside me don't alarm the people who walk by. In fact I'm often offered a meal or a drink. Or a night alone in someone's flat. And I know where to look so that the photographers can get the best shot. And not even the speedy camera’s aperture can see what's really happening inside of this pretty black and white dress. They think I’m approachable, and I just place my palm on my knee and feel the melee of me.
The Eyes
Are My
Own
The eyes are like a blanket that cover me and keep me still. It’s good to be still but it's hard when every eye opens and closes on me and I can feel the lashes and the wetness pressing against me. It's not the kind of blanket that will let me sleep. It's the kind that comes over me and keeps me and reminds me that they want me. And if I try to move my lips, they close my mouth with a stare. It's not as if there's anything I can do. The eyes are there everyday. And even when the blanket doesn't wrap itself around me, it certainly reminds me that I am only living because it's letting me. I know that my thoughts cannot reach the surface of my skin. My fingers cannot move, so that all I feel is what they let me feel. My inside world can move and twist, but it can never disturb the bones of my spine or my ribs or my pelvis. It should never come out as goosebumps or a tremble or a tear. Because the eyes won't have it. They won't allow it. They want to see me. They are going to cut me up into pieces and each eye is going to gape at me. Like a doctor. Like a gardener. Like any man who has two eyes. Or only one. Or prickly fingers. And the eyes are connected to limited parts of the body. And the eyes send shocks to the men who see me. And so I am the source of the energy. I am the thunderstorm. I destroy them, and I am not even raining. There's no wind to me. I should not be dangerous, and yet to them I am. And this is why they stand together and gawk at me as I eat my lunch or buy airline tickets or try to enjoy a day at the beach. Because the blanket is filled with thorns. The thorns they would remove from the roses that they give to me. Roses that they sit on the hood of my car or sneak into my locker when I was a junior in high school. And when the blanket is upon me, I am a saint. I am not in pain for God. I hurt for no reason. I hurt because I was born the other way and now the only eyes that don't try to eat me are my own.