The Past and Pending

Nobody ever asked you to stick your fingers in humble pie.

But, here you come, nails dripping red, and sweet

like cherry, like raspberry, like blood.

Everywhere I go I see butterfly wings.

Floating in the wind, detached from their original vessel,

 and on the grill of my car - which grins like an old man

with pieces of corn stuck in his teeth - and on black

pavement as I stride through street corners and passer-bys.

Sometimes I see them in the black behind my eyes when I blink.

Today I asked you if I had ever picked a scab off your skin

and you laughed.

“Yes,” you said, as a matter of fact

I had.

“Was I drunk?” I asked.

No, but you told me that you were.

If ever there were a night for you to notice me,

it would be this night.

I did not curl my hair and I did not wear blush.

This is me; the girl picking at a scab on her elbow

waiting for the bus to come down South Congress and up to Oltorf

where the gringas and old men wait.

If ever there were a night, it would be

where the Subway glows green and yellow like a super hero in the dark,

and the thrift store where all the price tags are in Spanish is black

like the bottom of a well,

like the bottom of my soul where I look up and see you.

Don’t reach down.

I might bite.

I can’t look at you

when you talk about your favorite films,

your favorite books, the moments of your life

that have struck you as pieces of heaven would -

filling up your mouth with soft cotton and cool rain,

chunks of gold to chew and fill your cavities with -

because you look too beauitful.

I can’t look at you

when you have that silly smile spread across your face,

your arms failing about, trying to fly,

your eyes glowing in the dark.

You’re too beautiful.

I’m just a pair of ears to your bones and teeth and soul.

I wear the scarf you bought me.

Sometimes I can feel it grow tighter around my throat

even though my fingers tie it so delicately,

so loose.

Does it hurt you to know you chose the wrong girl?

Or do you just swallow air the same way you do pride?

Realize me.

Realize I’m standing across the room,

dying where I stand as you walk

so nonchalantly around with your arms swinging

and your dull eyes blinking.

If a girl dies in a room without falling down,

does anyone see it?

Can you feel my ghost bathing in the sunlight that wakes you up each morning?

“I’m just a girl,

standing in front of a boy,

asking him to love her.”

There was nothing to us but tongue and soot.

We lived in the ashes of our fathers

of our crying mothers,

constantly searching for whatever it was we thought we had lost.

Even though, I believe, you cannot lose something

if you never owned it.

We lived on the outskirts of town and caught fireflies in our jars.

They were twinkling like city lights we’d never seen

on the night that I crawled through your bedroom window.

Your curtains were soft on my face

your bedsheets were dying on your floor

your eyes were wide open.

We did not sleep.

We could not sleep.

Our mouths tasted like fire

on the night that I crawled through your bedroom window.

There was nothing to us but tongue and soot.

Why can’t I search tags on Tumblr without seeing a bunch of naked women?

I think of summer skies and pretty dresses and smiling faces

Not tits.