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I pretend to live inside of four cream walls
I stare carefully at my pretty lamps and try not to touch my hair
I creep through the apartment like a jungle cat, all alone
On all fours, knees screaming and bruising
My bone marrow is shitty, sapped dry; blood-dust
I puff up my cheeks with air and blow it all away
And then I am a crouching skeleton with no blood at all
See, see how easy this is?
I’m sucking cherries in the bedroom, all alone
I stare carefully at each one before I slip it between my lips
I cradle it with my tongue and then it is
Crushed between my molars, screaming and bruising
I have spent my life pulling out all my hair because it feels good:
First, very carefully isolate one hair between shaking fingers
Then there is the pulling it out, and then the seeping, stinging warmth
And then the floorboards are covered with sad blonde hair
Me and my ponytail have a secret love story
A gritty, filthy affair spanning fifteen years
And then my bone marrow got sick and I had
An affair with it, instead
I suppose what I want is not to be afflicted by these very strange things
These obsessions, these affairs
The romance of my someday ponytail, the romance of my someday marrow
See? It is all terribly straightforward, in fact.
My real love story is with a boy,
A seafoam-skinned, chocolate-headed boy, who sleeps late into the afternoon
Sometimes I put my hair in two silly buns
And he kisses the top of my poor, mistreated head
In the mornings, I watch him like a stalker
Until he wakes up, messy cappuccino hair;
The wide, pink mouth spreading into a fat grin
Which draws the eyes into tiny winking moons, wedges of wet sapphire
He slaps my hand when he sees me pulling out my hair
Our parapets of crooked bone make a castle when we are alone
Wincing as I wander, I think of my secret ponytail lover
And then I trade her for a crown of dried blood |
