you're one of those girls who are so beautiful it pisses me off. i waste time thinking about you. hours turn to minutes, and minutes are no longer a measure. i lose sleep, while you lay there in the corner on your single mattress bed--no box, no springs. sheets and blankets twist around your ankles, wrap around your slender, scar wrecked wrists. you were gone before i finished slinging, sleeping in your dumb blue and grey abercrombie & fitch boxers, some guy's hoodie too big for you and falling off your shoulders. do you know your too small fingers twitch and grab while you're dreaming? your thighs are white like porcelain, licked clean and spotless. white like silken spider webs, strong as relative steel and ensnaring all the insects who fly close enough to get stuck in your sticky, tangled weave. bugs are stupid anyway. the ones who don't get wrapped up in you are left to be drawn into your flame and combust; ashes falling from their lips and blowing away in rising wafts of smoke. and to think i've wondered why my mouth was so dry, my tongue so thick for these past few months.
i wonder how you run so warm with skin as ivory as yours.
you talk about your boyfriends, you talk about your chances and all of the choices you have while i'm the one that kisses you and makes you smile. i listen and pretend not to be hurt, and i tell you how you could act to have those boys fall in love with you. i tell you how to fake it, and i buy you all the liquor and drugs you'll need to be invited over to their apartments night after night. and i pretend it doesn't happen when you get home and your carefully applied makeup has been rubbed off.
tell me, do you remember the night where i drove you around in my old jeep? you got too trashed, and were kicked out of the place you found crowded with people like you--never comfortable, but always pretending to be. i helped you stumble out as they locked their door behind us; your lips red and your cheeks flushed clean, stripped hair tousled and sticking up funny; as tear stained as your expensive petticoat with the big black buttons. you had forgotten how to speak for a while, so we drove around in silence. you hated the beer i had (yes, it was my favourite brand), but you drank it with me while we were stalled in the park that night. you took my coat and wrapped it all around you. talk radio mumbling through my blown speakers, gurgling electric waves and static, you buried your face in my favourite shirt, and you cried. all your secrets spilling from your ground down teeth, powdered enamel falling down upon my lap and i carried you all the way home.
your eyes had stained my favourite shirt, and i really liked that shirt. it'd be a lie to say i wasn't a little sad about it initially; the way your mascara ran into it and your purple eyeshadow ground deep into it's thread. it was early morning and you were home asleep where i had put you to bed, and i hoped my shirt was salvageable. i put it in the wash, drowsy eyes watching the spin cycle with my chin in my hand. fingers bored and thumbing through my mess of hair, ignoring the tweekers walking in and out of the community laundromat. i must have started to doze off, because i remember waking up when the buzzer rang on washing machine #12. walking over and opening the door, pulling out my clothes.
it hurts now to admit. when i saw my shirt was clean again, i felt empty with the stains being gone.
