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The room’s age clings the walls and paints the light cream in the spaces time begins to reach like scars backwards the way they never clean and just hurt until the skin falls.
I’m sure I’d be seeing some novelty peel some more features over that patch up O’Neill’s head that looks more like Amy now Quinn’s hair covers it in cinnabar and jungle if I hunch when words and hours blend and suddenly it comes clear all class is just learning how to stare at people the right way.
The bell rings and shadows hurl and flower under the sun’s halogen and floors change faces and steps together when every door slams empty and the halls retch when others’ skins and sounds grate and undress them of peace.
The walk back festers enough rain has time to drool houses and tan the streets in gulfs and ripples that break the sky when I crack them open and the world distorts just right I can forget life how no-one else is beside me,
how Kevin and Brittany just feel right together because all school teaches is how it should be and Mac and Jodie form ideal when they stand close but really life just feels less alone when there’s another eating up dead space and leaves like seasons and marriage probably is like that except love grips and turns what sticks to rot when it withers.
Mom and dad and Quinn and I
it’s dinner when we’re together and it’s the only time we circle and eat,
it eats me,
Quinn cannibalizes the whole day and mom and dad bite.
Jane’s voice is distant when she tells me I exaggerate, but no, the day, it really eats you alive but she’s not like that she says,
she says how’s class, I didn’t go because, uh, well, y’know
Quinn
and all the other people, too.
Bitch. I say it’s fine and it’s the one day I finally learn something from her and it’s how to dissociate right.
How’s Trent? I ask just because, just to fill in the blanks, there’s too much space.
She says he’s fine, he woke up and found his calling when their parents referred seven missing calls from the bank so he’s gotta find a job now, no buts if they want gas.
I’m almost sorry that’s when it flatlines and I think their power went out, too, but outside the night flares white and moonlight breathes in solace, so I guess they gave Trent the whole town’s bills and he really has to get off his ass now.
Home darkens in ink and corners dance together and unfocus swims your toes into bark and you laugh because it’s like that, the pain is clear but shape disappears in the dark.
Quinn’s in the hall with her incense stick and her face smokes and ages like Amy the way I remember her anger is beauty with mist.
She glares uneven and there’s this empty inbetween us like silence even when she speaks, What happened? where are you going? Amy again? God, Daria
I’m weird.
Her light sags off above and it’s sunset under the stairs, mom traffics red and yellow when she’s hit by streetlight and bleaches in the dark,
she looks at me and says all the same, all things you hear at night, don’t go out, ask your dad, if it’s Jane-
“I’m going to Amy.”
She hears me and her face wrinkles a bit. But it’s fine, it’s not weird,
it’s how it’s phrased: No wrinkles; all clean.
Dad’s not home yet and that’s good, it’s three streets now, it’s nothing, but sometimes it’s something.
I want the wait to long after me and the night in white asters to wash how it tastes like tears and it’s the same as yesterday like I realize today, but it’s the same as looking up and seeing all the times you spoke to God but instead it’s art with little pieces of clean needled in the char.
All religion is self-interpretive, I think.
I think it’s enough now. Amy’s house is there, always there, I come in without invite because she expects me to go nowhere and at least her door is open.
She’s
God.
Stunning.
Leaves my hands cramped on the knob and I forget my mouth.
The house tastes like cleaner but she knows how to pick ‘em and dinner’s ready for her.
She acts like she’s surprised but that smile and those eyes and she’s soft when I hug and bodies feather together like carcrash and the night crushes right.
Her face is like Quinn’s and that patch in class I hope they never fix and keeps breaking because I know love is when you can’t stop looking even when you kiss.
Her hair is flowers and rust and bleeds in my hands and she and I and I can’t think the day away or anything else
this is how my skin grills.
Walls wax off and the floor fucks my joints but there’s always catharsis in pain and she knows I don’t care what she does.
I'm old enough to choose
to chew more.
Clothes pool colour and flesh rashes dirt and cuts flash red and blue tomorrow when I’m worn.
She bites and eats the dust.