Overlyemotional

Overlyemotionalmelodramatic

Take the train

fly off the handle

I don’t care how you do it

Just get here

Now

Everything is so important

I’m telling you to fucking do it

Now

because the years make gaps

In my teeth

Spaces

Indelible

Marked with poison ivy

I have random heart palpitations

I’m not sure if any of this is fair

Pains in your chest

Go see a doctor

Life is too fragile

Seventeen

If I could do it over

I wouldn’t

It was perfect then

But now is a has-been

Have I ever tried to be less temperamental?

Have I ever rode the back

of a white horse

down to the court house

Perhaps in dreams I said, “Let them eat cake”

A real B-movie version of Marie Antoinette

But mostly I cried

Because every bump in the road

Was the apocalypse

Every chip in my nail

Was a chip in my shoulder

Every highway sign gave me

A panic attack which could later

Be traced to my time-of-death

I’m sure no coroner would even bother…

In the living room—

Yellow light shines

On cigarette stained walls

You click click click

With your thumb…

Joystick your way to

Beating a level

As I thumb my way to your heart

Click keys with the precision

Of a typist at an ad agency

But what I write is even

Less important

Days slide into each other

Gloomy or grey

At times I have contemplated

The inevitability of everything

The scenes I can unfold

Like origami and remember

Just how to fold it the same way

All over again

The scenes we play out

The roles I have memorized

And the lines like Hersey wrappers

Like gum wrappers with some girl’s

Name and phone number written on

Them in loopy cursive

We unfold and re-fold again

Three-fold is the rule

I’m not sure the religion

I have folded many holy things

On days other than Sundays

I am also very superstitious

But basically just a snot-nosed kid

Who gets overemotionalmelodramatic

When things don’t go my way.

I took a class on grammar and punctuation.

It reminded me about important issues

Such as the proper use of a semi-colon

And a dependant clause.

I still don’t know how to punctuate us

I’m not sure if it should be a comma

Or a conjunction…and….

Or maybe just an ellipses

You …

I wish sometimes that you were ugly

So I could make less shallow decisions

Your eyes paralyze me

You are my wet dream from when I was sixteen

And my regression at 25

And now I’m just trying to get tough:

Leather jacket, red nailpolish, drive-fast,

All night, smoker’s voice and the body of a

Stick-figure

But who was that girl in the graveyard

With the blue balloon

And is her voice fading to a

Hussshhhh

Whisper

When you were inside me

I was thinking about a center

Opening up

Not all the fake façade shit we

Pretend is important

No one cares if you owned 12 pairs

Of Nikes when you are dead.

I know my voice, a chalking hallow

Of a steel drum,

The perfect needle scratch against

Parchment

The thread that follows the needle

The blood which precedes

I need more than this language to get through to you

I need more than syllables and

question marks and

subjects and

predicates

I need more than Freudian memories

And fatalistic delusions

I need more than fear to light a match under me

A certain roar from the tongue of God

I need to drive far without remembering where I am going

Without the sense to turn-back around.

Unafraid

I don’t believe in 25

The magic happens at 16 and possibly 17

a quick flash from a  disposable camera and then it’s over

left-over Chinese food and spilt milk

this is what I will leave you with

when I leave your house

the crumbs on your fire-escape

a trail to nowhere in particular

 

If someone had warned me that I would wake up

And suddenly feel old before my time

In a car in the middle of the highway

Bumps and clanks me around

And I am so far from the womb I came from

So far from the shrill cries of teenage angst

And whatever it is you people do nowadays

 

Once I wondered if I’d grow up to be a brighter bulb

And platinum bombshell queen of the underground

I grew up scared

Instead

I was a tiny scratch on your record

A whisper in the trees

A voice so hoarse and soft

Only your flesh knows the words

Your mouth cannot fathom

 

I told her that she’d begin to grow up

Just like me

If she made all the right mistakes

The ones with boys in cars

And the ones where she picks up the wrong thing

Smokes something

Anything

I knew there’d come a time

Where she’d wake up with a buzz

In her ears

Electricity

It would  seem

But the flicker is gone

And the static remains

Adjusting the bunny-ears on an old television

Nothing makes sense

Everything would fall like white snow

On a black screen

One day she’d wake up—thirty

With bills to pay and an unclean kitchen

One day she’d learn to pray

Hard and fast

Wake up in a pant—

“God grant me the serenity…”

One day she’d wake up in a haze of

Soup cans and one word answers

But nothing can be explained

Or solved or fathomed with one word

 

I was always my mother’s daughter

Her skin- alabaster white

I’d always aim to please

Bend and twist to suit her needs

I’d lay flat on the floor if she needed to walk over me

 

Once I wrote the melodies

You play on repeat in your heart

An over-used music box that knows the song

Slightly off key and a little bit delayed

My mother is magic and too big to fit inside a poem

Or a hallmark card

She is black boots and eyeliner

She is brash and spectacular

She knows all the answers

And she is nothing like me

Scared and shy, pretending to be

Unafraid.