cast your eyes on the book they’re etched onto
puppet-like politeness always comes to mind
cursory cotton-wool, wall-to-wall whiteness
[she likes your attitude/she tries it on for size] i’m no artist, nor am i a muse-
but i’m here; surprised, ruby-red and velvet led/
enthused by the lady-of-the-flowers aesthetic
imaginary friend who snatched away the pen
scribbled in the margin and sketched me instead/
a barely brushed bed-head of tanin stained tangles
cratered skin and dry lips beneath botched bangs
my meandering melancholy met megalomania
acquainted and inflamed in the witching hours
wrote over my pixellated polly-pocket stories
thought they were wistful and nonsensical
suffused with discourses of lingering impurity
the martyr’s notion that she’s unclean, a libertine.
so they darkened the endings with elderberries
let the value judgements rot with the roses
a pocketful of posies/
pain-ridden and petal-lined
figments of fascination fossilised/
antique faraway tree fantasy
forged by a fuzzy, fruitless prototype/
implicit, indirect and ill-defined
clumsily crafted from shards of sapphire
babbling between breaths, half-heartedly alive
head-spun and hardwired to hide my eyes
in case she sees what lies behind them
gears which grind and catch on my skin
i reject/respectfully decline this feeling.
i bit myself once, now i’m twice as shy
she styles out baby-faced with brilliance
whereas, i’m moon-shaped and mourning/
marred by meta-reflection midnight oil
mouthing spells and clutching the table
like the time i shocked the unshockable
so this child of time would weep no more
because i should, ought and must
so much, and so often-
pen grips perpetually paralyse/
paper-cuts as friendly reminders
i’m sharing a skull with this fuck up/
god forbid, i become unstuck and own my space
bathe in the glow-worm glimmer/garnet tinted
[it seemed to last for hours] [it seemed to last for days] watch it wither as i weep/lay everything to waste
sprouting speculation from seeds of self-sabotage/
standing steadfast and staring as our stars crossed
because the light embossed was never my shine/
it was inherited. that said, i loved the lend in it/
such sentiments static, shadowed by sediment
which i’ll spirit away and treasure forever
