matilda

[mmatildaheine]

Would you curse the trees for crying?

What would you do when the first rays of January sun sift into your hungry, dryskin after months of muddy skies?

Would you dream of lying? Walk through a 19th-century cemetery with a half- finished, half-cold oat cortado clasped between your icicle fingers? Curse the trees for crying?

If it hadn’t started—not just yet—would you dream again of the sweet, sweet burn in your chest and the salty aftertaste that will linger on the roof of your mouth for months to come, from all the biting of your tongue, and chewing of your cheek? If it hadn’t started yet, dearest, would you dream of the day when the burning hot water won’t be enough to wash the oh-so-familiar patterns of fingertips off your sore red, skin — leaving you stained, just as adolescent love bites do? If it hadn’t started yet, would you, too, dream of the day the eyes melt to mirror yours? Dream of how the sound the bed makes when they leave in the middle of the night will haunt and howl from the darkest corner of your room—every night at five past two?

Dearest, I beg, please send upon a sign. It’s barely even started yet, and I’m dreaming of the day I can curse what I can’t reverse. I’m dreaming of the day I turn all my mirrors around, then speak in tongues, and spit my lemon-zest venom down the throat one last time before I inevitably call what hasn’t happened yet a crime. Scream into the void, “Thank God I’m alive.” Then use it as an anecdote—a way to pass the time when someone asks “who’s to blame for all this crying?”.

Dearest Diary, what would you do when asked what’s on your mind?

plausibly yours, always.

[mmatildaheine]

Tuscan sun rug / Some Things May Just Be Better Off Unfinished

I.

He laid starfish on the bed.

He never had to be scared

of taking up space

— or taking away what is mine.

With his limbs spread out like branches

on a backroad after a category-four storm,

and translucent skin shimmering as morning dew does

on the dead grass of forgotten front yards.

The bags beneath his eyes mirroring the thickly layered,

chipped black polish on his bitten-down nails.

And then, just above that, shut eyelids flickering

like a film reel damaged by cigarette embers and pint-glass rings

in a pitch-black cinema—

leaving just enough to let it roll

over and over again.

But that hardly mattered, for

he could make weeks disappear

with the snap of his fingers.

He was so skilled at it,

that apart from the brown-red splotches

on his white work T-shirt

from when he forced the cocaine to

gnaw its way through his airways;

the hardened, cement-like rings

making a home by his sore, flaring nostrils;

the pungent ammonia smell from his damp, ripped jeans—

clinging to him like an infant to their parent;

or the pulsing pinkish-purple swellings between my thighs

from when he pried them open like stubborn Velcro—

there was no evidence of time having passed at all

when he inevitably came to.

II.

Tonight, I made my bed

on our scratchy, rough Tuscan-sun rug,

its piss and blood stains masked by

glitter and hair, press-ons and lashes—

some mine, and some the girls’

that pass through here often.

I rest in his makeshift coffin,

of empty wine bottles missing the screw cap,

and the tiny plastic bags that he liked

to tear open and then lick out with his

yellow-coated tongue—

leftovers for breakfast,

with me by his side,

a sight too grim to bear,

rougher than the rug.

Knees to my chest, my sweetly sticky thighs

covered in lint and dust and grime

from when his pint took flight

and landed just right.

III.

I’ve always dreaded

our makeshift, shape-shift purgatory,

and sleep eludes me these days.

But I’ve started to pray—

as loud as one can with a throat sewn shut—

while he spins tragedy into triumph

in his sweet, sweet velvet abyss.

I lay and beg

that his thick, sour stench

find its way into my airways,

a chemical burn that would go unnoticed till it was too late;

that the pointed press-ons dig their way through my spine

and turn my insides to goo, like puddles.

I could blend right in with the carpet;

that the cement-like rings find their way from him to me,

and into my brain, filling each crevice,

till the floor has no choice but to give in,

and my cemented cells land on the kitchen table

on the floor just beneath ours.

[mmatildaheine]

[mmatildaheine]

Kas mäletate veel sügist?

Do you remember? When the trees near the pub by the garden turned golden, brown, and orange hues till suddenly the warmth we had been searching for all summer long swarmed all around us. When the air got so sharp, so crisp; still - like the world finally stopped, and then, just like that, for a brief moment, we both believed we may be hedonists.

Do you remember? When the leaves started falling and falling and falling till suddenly autumn’s very own perfume danced between us, as if kissing the season of impending doom farewell? And then we fell, too—over and over and over again, for a place too heavy to hold this close to our hearts.

Aber wir sind sowieso schon viel zu vertraut mit dem Rausch, den Abschiede so mit sich bringen. So you continue to make all your secrets mine, and we pretend that the shivers sent down our spines by the acidic taste of the pub's cheapest white wine are to blame for all this crying.

Weißt du noch?

[mmatildaheine]

rotting or like whatever

[mmatildaheine]

and i wont know forgiveness either

[mmatildaheine]

about three seasons ago i was prescribed a trip to the sea side. now summers almost over and even the seagulls have grown tired of my seemingly everlasting frown (i think)

[mmatildaheine]

three wise men and a field of poppies

acumen and common sense,

stainless childish innocence.

one more frightening than the last.

here, where they cross, is where I'll stay

here, where they cross, is where I'll decay.