first

"I was first."

Everyone stopped talking and stared at her as if she'd done

something unconscionable. The pronouncement hovered, rippling in

the air long after she'd closed her mouth. It was brash, perhaps,

but the words had escaped with unstoppable certainty,

a bold assertion which refused to be challenged.

They all stood in silence, indefinitely fixed

on this public act of self-defense.

It was her first.

photo: tea shafie

ruin, silently

Somehow we were ruined, like that time you bled on my new white sheets. Remember those new white sheets?

Now they're stained with silence, the fading outlines reminders

of everything left unsaid.

I never said this, either. I love your middle name.

Photo: appleapplegreen

transference

Hovering above bare flesh I stole his sadness,

trapped like a newborn's breath in feline lungs.

photo: hophopscotch

My hand on your chest, you never liked it when I touched your heart.

photo: self

like leaves

They sat facing each other on the train's vinyl seat as it carried them all the way out to the sea. Squinting, she dressed his pale lips in bold hues, creating a bow with her brush where there wasn't before.

Frozen in her hands, he held his breath while she worked. She'd never paint him unrecognizable, though she often did herself.

And she pulled back and smiled, dizzied by the blur of trees through the window behind him. Then like leaves kissing glass, she brushed her lips against his, undoing it all before the ocean ever could.


photo: LOV-E

pineapple

Today I walked down your old street, keeping time with the rising sun. I remembered a similar morning two summers ago, when I tiptoed out your front door and bought a pineapple while you slept. "Pineapple!" you exclaimed when you awoke and saw it sitting there, crosshatched and expectant. But our paranoid stomachs prevented us from ever tasting it.

I saw you dance on that street like no one was watching. I saw you cry on that street like no one was watching, too.

I hope you're only dancing, these days.

Photo: Tethered to

the answer's always yes

They called you babydoll for your first five years, until an agent at a passport office near Fresno forced your mother to name you something "real". She said that name aloud just once, and even now, only border guards at foreign checkpoints remember it as yours.

I think of that as I watch you slowly dropping clothing, like a trail of aliases, onto my bedroom floor. You're shedding little piles of sequins and mythology and I'm glowing inside, because I know that when I ask "should we...?" your answer will always be "yes".

Photo: Beatrice Neumann

obstruction

I've been running into your imaginary obstacles for so long,

my limbs are permanently bruised.

(Photo: Lucy Howard-Taylor)

milk teeth

“Kiss me with your teeth,” I insisted.

“It will hurt,” you whispered back.

“It won’t,” I assured you, extending the nape of my neck like a compromised mink,

coyly anticipating slaughter. “I’ll like it.”

With reluctance you obliged, tilting your head and grazing me on the horizontal.

With each pass you seized more flesh, enthusiasm intensifying.

And my breath convinced you I was right on both counts.

Only now do I realize you were referring to your pain.

diversion

She tried looking at something beautiful to keep herself from crying.

But it only made her cry harder.

Photo: Harpy

horse house

Last night I dreamt I had a horse. But I had nowhere to house him.

We wandered the streets of the city, dreading nightfall all the while.

No one wanted a girl with a horse. It was a fact that was confirmed repeatedly.

He and I persisted in silence, each feigning strength for the sake of the other.

Eventually darkness found us, both wishing quietly for sleep.

Photo: Delicious Aloysius

little sips

She only drank out of jam jars- tiny, ridge-lipped containers covered with raised glass berries. The smooth patterns depicted the type of fruit each jar formerly housed, a vitreous Braille that my fingertips tried time and again to decipher. Everything in her apartment was shrunken and makeshift, a gypsy dollhouse filled with rescued curios and ritual.

Those miniature vessels promoted her instinct to fawn, to allocate. She was forever springing from her antique stool to gift houseguests with fresh supplies of little sips, measured tokens of her love.

And it was with that same ceremony that she contained me, precious restraint still visible in the dark. Her command was sweet, like jars of phantom fruit realized. Possessive preservation- it was all she knew.

Photo: Nynewe

whisper wall

She leaned all of her nine years against the whisper wall, waiting for a message that would never come. Fragments of conversation darted back and forth across the room like invisible time travelers, breathy and segmented.

But she heard each of his words clearly, hot and hissing and as deliberate as bristles on hardwood. Startling, vile aspirates flew from his unseen mouth while lewd consonants hatched deep from within, acrid and sickly. Terrified, she waited until only traces of other people's hushed secrets could be heard richocheting between the walls before she turned around, slowly.

Scanning the room, she choked on the air, heavy with truncated information. His smile mocked her from across the hall. He stared into her eyes and nodded slightly before vanishing into the crowded museum.

Dizzy and overcome, she remembered the smell of the damp, flattened brown bag lunches they had eaten in the Field Trip Lunch Room, smashed peanut butter and rain sandwiches. How she wished to be like those cold cans of soda, tightly wrapped in layers of tinfoil. They were so shiny, those cans. So safe.

Photo: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

go on

Last night I begged someone to make it all stop on my behalf.

Tonight I'm drawing five-tiered infinity symbols on your back with my fingers,

wishing it would never end.

Photo: Miss Bob Renno