could i come near your beauty with my nails

Bent. 24. Manila. I'm not standing still, I am lying in wait.

[screwballdame]

criteria for adulthood

1. the first time you can touch the gunk that gathers at the bottom of the sink without cringing -- it's just spit and animal fat, not the end of the world

2. lovingly cleaning up your dog's shit and comparing the experience to your someday-baby

3. alternately, driving your dog to the vet for the last time, now with full knowledge that your pet turtle never ran away, your old hamster never went to a better place -- and it hurts, it hurts, but this isn't the end of the world either

4. when you find the files where your parents keep a list of their debts and reevaluate every moment you ever thought them invincible

5. hovering over a former love's name on facebook and never sending a friend request because you lost touch for a reason -- you've grown now, and that version of your world ended long ago

note: if you notice that a lot of these things involve the choice between touching or not touching what you find unsavory, you aren’t far off

[screwballdame]

in the bitterness, 6 october 2015

[screwballdame]

bloom, 3 october 2015

[screwballdame]

beauty in french, 1 october 2015

[screwballdame]

i am tired of writing about the war in the world.

first i need to recover from the war in me.

[screwballdame]

i offer my heart as a token(because both of us know it's not worth anything more than that) your narrowed eyes tell me it isn't enough before your lips curve down in disdain,"what am i supposed to do with it? attach it to my backpack as a pin or a keychain? take it with me when i go bowling, kiss it for good luck? i won't use it as a pillow to bleed all over my sheets,won't put it on the shelf to throb and disturb incoming visitors. make me a meal." so i go and buy groceries.add plenty of spices and olive oil. after you scoff at the lit candle we sit down on opposite ends of the table, put our hands together to thank dead gods for this feast. i reach for the chopsticks while you use your hands(and your teeth, gnashing,pulling, the closest you've come to a smile) the sinew is tough and difficult to chew,difficult to swallow, faintly bitter from stored resentment, but the meat, oh the meat, underneath, is red and sweet, metallic like a wedding ring, like misplaced affections.

[screwballdame]

violet hour

the rain stinks on the pavement because i've smelled it on your skin it's three pm and i'm wondering if there's a downpour where you are a universe away (i'm exaggerating; it's only an ocean, or two, though it might as well be light years anyway) if you're wearing the coat i lent you, thick and soft over your goosefleshed arms, or if you've left it at home, with nothing but a book over your head, your hair wet and plastered like a sculpture along your nape and jaw (your immune system will protest, but you have a habit of flirting with anything that moves, and that includes a storm) i won't say the gray skies remind me of your winter eyes (they don't; yours are darker, mercurial, and my stomach doesn't churn when i look heavenward) prayer is an empty gesture here, and my clasped hands won't bring you closer (though my lips sometimes slip, and this traitorous tongue mutters for your return) did you know the rain stinks on the pavement because i've smelled it on your skin, as if it belongs nowhere else; as if a hurricane has fallen in love as i have, too.

[hedgewitches]

"the Word did our stories wrong." (x)

[screwballdame]

scale

you smile like you're fighting a battlefield's worth of trauma and resisting facial muscles to get there, your lips like a blade, your brows knit like a noose, your laugh like a dysfunctional violin. you smile jagged and fierce and weathered, like you don't deserve to. like you've got something to prove.

[screwballdame]

white powder, white ash

the problem with men today is that they've never known a girl like you. a girl who stalls time with her smile, topples skyscrapers with her nails, a girl whose lone voice could fill the hollows of an opera house a hundred times over. men are too preoccupied with fighting, and so am i. i often forget that a heart is not just a target, that a cause is not always worthwhile, that good and evil are always changing depending on who's holding the pen. we are at war and we ought to know better, we ought to stop loving before we become each other's casualties. you ought to stop thinking you can bandage the world with your pretty words, i ought to stop handwaving all sentiment as useless. (you know it's a lie, anyway; i cannot bear to wash your lipstick from my skin, your mouth on my neck, your palm on my chest, you heard the music of an erratic heartbeat, and you know, you know.) the problem with men today is that they don't care to know any girls, even you. they've plugged their ears long ago. please, don't ever let me be like that. pull me back. keep me listening. the last thing i want is to turn to stone while i'm lying in your arms.

[screwballdame]

new faces

this life, like the one before it, i found you and i loved you and we failed.

sometimes it’s your fingers kissing my pulse with the intent to kill, sometimes the air leaves my lungs years before it does yours.

loving sounds too much like leaving and that’s all we ever do

but i’d rather hit the dust with you than have my knees come out unscathed

[screwballdame]

loose ends

i fleshed out your name in pencil filled one notebook and bought another this time with ball point, this time with ink (let's try for a little permanence, now turn the page) and when my knuckles befriended callouses i bought paper and a typewriter to inflict the love of you on my fingertips instead and when i killed enough trees i immortalized you on a computer screen, a series of random letters in muscle memory i wrote until my hands made a god of me and prayed that i would stop i wrote until the figures became meaningless like you to me and my to you i remembered you too much, held on too tightly, and loved you too hard now forgetting you is as easy as unlearning the alphabet when reading was my favorite hobby.

[screwballdame]

(i talked to an angel and i still have eyes)

7. all of heaven including those who fell strive to be like you." 3. there is nothing biblical or tragic about not being adored by you you were designed to be loved by someone with enough of it to spare, and my heart was not build for that much 1. you took your orders from the Most High but for one night without the stars you said you were mine and you took me to a place where heaven wasn't watching 2. i only counted for less than twelve hours, a half-moon's reign, a camel's eye inside the subatomic particle of one of your forevers, but i stil did a feat no one has ever managed for as long as you've lived 4. you laughed -- a small country shook and believed in the lord again -- and said "your heart is an atomic bomb a firearm aimed at the open palm of a saint when we were together did you think my wings came out unharmed? you cannot be more explosive if you tried 5. "you are made of brimstone and god's breath the apocalypse is just you splitting the atom again 6. "duty and purpose and divinity will not sustain eternity it is sentiment that keeps us here

[screwballdame]

about me;

i don't know how to learn new songs i don't know how to love without being bored (clouds grow tired of being gray and roses can feel like causing pain there's nothing organic about that smile on your face) easier to feel how my hair connects to the roots or how a fingernail rests on the skin than the yearning for someone already gone or someone who wants to be let in; i don't know how to succeed without being a machine.

[screwballdame]

little zombie apocalypse things

i tracked you for over a thousand miles but i only ever found your heart in an abandoned freezer i've always known that you can't carry dead weight in this dead world but the overturned wheelchair on the side of the road seems to cement a four year old's regret ("why don't we have wings, why can't we fly, why can't we be birds instead?") one hundred opened bottles of bourbon fifty hijacked guns stolen back but i'll never see your face, moonlit and drowsy smiling at me from a windowsill again (never hear you say i was a trooper for putting up with your angry soul never taste your bitter coffee breath on my equally bitter tongue) i suppose it's useful for this age kindness will only get you eaten turn you into a pile of brains, a carcass, unloved and unburied.

[screwballdame]

a flowery truth

sometimes i think i can cut my lip on the corner of your smile; (sometimes i actually do) and you have your name on so many scars, none of which mark your own skin. it's always starless when you wander around at night; (i've never seen a moon so terrified of showing us its face) the sky paints itself dark like your intentions though the wind isn't colder than your eyes. you are so violent, even when you laugh, that when they hear it roses wither or cut themselves open; there is a blood feud in your heart, and i was not the first who thought they could conquer it (i wouldn't be the last.)

[screwballdame]

assuming that you know what love is and i don't have to explain that there is no "buyer" and "bought" in this game, let me take it further and tell you that the most you can do is borrow or make a loan pawn an admirer from the streets or okcupid you don't need to know their histories beforehand but you need to be able to show a part of your heart or the semblance of one, an ID to the VIP exclusive club of pretending to be human you can have them leveled later, when you're done though we treat our guests well here if we want them to return for more pining, or aching, to awaken from a coma of longing and if celebrities had souls then they don't anymore our husks have been sucked dry by a culture of lust i don't mind if they debate our personhood anymore we always derailed that conversation anyway standing on the horizon of an awakened world commissioned to bring feeling back to the public prepackaged and audience-tested we adorn each other's heads with wreaths of orchids  and we cannot walk without stepping on the thorns from the bouquets of roses they threw at our feet the entirety of human connection can be summed up in a burst of explosive ombre light  a maze of cities mapped out in electricity because we are always trying to make out each other's faces even when the sun says "go to sleep". we will always be reaching for another even when we cannot see anything in the dark there are no gentlemen in the bedroom there are only two or three or more people exchanging crossfire words instead of swords, nakedness instead of bullets there is someone in the elevator stuck with a one-night stand but it wouldn't scare them from using an elevator again we cannot see the damage we've unleashed until we look at our love from different eyes it's exactly like a hurricane, exactly like the sight from the trenches you were the sniper and i was the heart that refused to beat someday the economy will recover from how you gave me the slip there is no revenue in this game without you.