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