Submissions by Virginiapetal

You say,
You’re such a mess.
Look at your feelings spilling all over the floor
Your heart clutched in your fist.    
It’s immature, all this blood and pain.
And then the tears, loathsome.  It’s not death.  Not this.
Have you tried the egg salad croissant?  That’s worse than death.

But death isn’t worse.  I know.  
Death blows smoke into your brain, languidly soaks every dark corner
Until you hide a serrated knife under the seat of your car.
For safety.  For comfort.  Just in case you decide to let go of the heart in your fist.
You reach...

I’m a mistake cloaked in compassion,
I linger in your hallways, inhale your musky scent;
Cigarettes and oil;
I swallow your leftovers and amble in your stilted shadows;
Your anointed nymph, forever waiting
For your recovery.

But she waits too, with needles and tar.
A spineless debutante, caressing you with necrosis  
Replete with corpulent tranquilizers,
Unconditional numbness and love.
She’s a lumbering beast
With a fistful of pills and rancor.
And I understand
Why you choose her.  

I wait in the front seat, with my knees tucked under my legs
While you visit our son
I watch you kiss his plump cheeks, make him giggle,
He glows, flushes, fondles every word, every breath,
Your hallowed love.
I am trying to remember…
Did you look at me?
I know you didn’t think to.
I tugged on your pants, too low, so childish,
You need money?
Here’s your foolish money
And I shove it into your pocket.

I have a secret.  Tucked under my knees.
A holy longing, residual virtuousness,
Haunted by woebegone ghosts.
Infinitely,...

I’m a contrived beauty.
If I were grim faced Hester Prynn
Framed in a solemn, white hat and loose, billowy drapes
Of religious chastity
I would fade into a sea of pale, droning faces
Yearning, like all of them, for the slightest indication
I was something singular.
But that’s not me.
I find the means from bottles
And jars, pallets, sprays, boots,
Liquid fantasy
And all the singularity I receive ordinarily  
Is wholly contrived.