Silvered Blood

silvered blood

so cold, with mercury instead of blood. metal running through your veins. silver pools languid, spilling, pouring out across dips and rivets. a girl with this in her blood, fantastical, silver, only to find that a heart does not beat when it is made of stone, lungs do not breathe when they are shattered glasses, a body cannot live without a mind to guide it and she was lost- a girl cannot survive on love alone. for this you lost her

three days after.

emigrant in a body

i’m not from here you see or i am but that’s not what i meant in life we are all passing through onto some other kind of life. i just meant that i didn’t live here i’m just a visitor in this body, these bones a cathedral the tourists come to take pictures in. stained glass with too many metaphors and the windows are dirty from people looking in, smudged and blurry as they pass by. i pass by and the pavement thuds heavy beneath my feet, visited by a ghost or two on the way the face on the subway poster says ‘in case of emergency’ but it’s always an emergency. somehow you can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going sleep in one bed, get up, leave walk the streets without meaning. we don’t belong anywhere. we don’t belong. we don’t belong anywhere but here. i am leaving to pass on from this place and i hope you come with me too.

STEP ONE: get yourself a pair of stilettos (knives and heels) and learn how to use them.

you are cruelty

STEP TWO: put on your mask of makeup, smoky eyes and lipstick that’s begging to be smeared.

you are divine

STEP THREE: dance, in leather and stilettos, a drink in hand. smoke if you need to but don’t show a single sign of weakness.

this is strength

STEP FOUR: if someone comes up to you, the answer is yes. it doesn’t matter what the question is.

for once someone says please

STEP FIVE: let them take you home and tame you. wash off your mask. dress in sweaters and skirts and learn how they like their tea, what it means when they don’t say i love you. when they do say that sometimes the look in your eyes scares them.

(five and a half: you could try to love them for a little while. maybe this one’s heart won’t be quite so fragile.)

STEP SIX: this doesn’t change who you are. take their heart and break it into pieces with your bitten up fingernails and sharp, aching teeth. your mouth is red like blood again, knives hidden in your pockets, and your eyes, they are cruel in the darkness.

this is what you have become

STEP SEVEN: laugh when they cry and say that wild things cannot ever be tamed. they were a fool to ever think that they could love you.

unknowable, unlovable

STEP EIGHT: go home and show the mirror the blood on your hands. ask if this is what you wanted, what you meant. the house stands quiet around you.

entirely capable of breaking.

sleep. repeat.

HOW TO BREAK A HEART (PRETEND IT IS NOT YOUR OWN) :: o.m. 2017

bruises, kisses

i want to leave lipstick marks on someone like bruises, kisses. tally them up- a box fills, a body turns purple in affectation. a string of them like pearls or freckles on a collarbone, something violent in this love. something savage. something wild. aren’t they the same anyway

the ending of the queen

you should at least know this; her lips were purple when they found her, god-like on her throne. a crown, a chain, a kiss. sealed in blood.

a queen. lost in the end.

all the things wrong with me in your mind

do not try to save me 
if i have not asked to be saved. 
i take my shirt off in the dim morning 
light & trace my ribs. 
there is nothing underneath my skin 
that feels the way it should, 
disasters in the making 
the way everything spills out of my mouth. 
white tights & strong thighs & too many 
different emotions. 
when you work your muscles and body 
you are ripping yourself 
apart to create something new, 
the sickle twist of my foot in a shoe 
as i stand in two inch boxes 
with nothing on. my body is reshaping itself 
while i think it is growing 
& the muscles burn in everything. 
i can still fit two fingers underneath 
the cage of my ribs 
or two fingers in between my teeth 
like a kiss. 
the crack of my thighs is a tunnel, 
a cavern, a chasm, a divide 
we don’t speak about. this body 
is one i could be rid of. 
i don’t feel myself here & i’m still waiting for you to tell me i can come home 
to a place without 
this fear of living or jumping off of bridges. 
the things i have let into myself. 
the things i have yet to un-see. 
this image of myself in a mirror, rose-lips 
curled 
with skirts or stockings or dresses. 
a dysphoria of what i want 
& who i am to be. 
listen, my bones don’t know how 
to love in other way. they are fractured 
like the last time i jumped 
in my red shoes & you caught me wrong 
with hands under my arms 
or around my throat 
nobody cared which. witch. which? 
if i recall correctly you said i was. 
might’ve been bitch. i was too busy 
with the funhouse mirror aimed 
at my torso 
to notice any other perception of me. 
in a necktie with the sunrise i compete 
to see who burns faster first 
& i win because there’s nothing left to burn. 
for such confusion of these walls 
i can’t see myself think & in the dark 
it is a good thing because my edges don’t wear out. 
i never asked for this to happen 
& in all honesty i’m not broken 
i’m just waiting for the day when i can sleep 
without covering my body & these bones.