darling, don't cry

[witherrosetrio]

you think of rashes--itches you cant stratch; bugs on your skin you can't swat, your focus narrowed to the crawling, the prick of the tiny pedipalps, the glint of a golden watch. all around you are people who have never starved a day in their life, and you scarcely enter an ordinary gala without keeping one eye on the easy marks: the man in the silver tuxedo, face red with intoxication; the giggling senator who always loses her way to the ballroom; the bespectacled assistant constantly checking his watch. your legs skitter you over to his side, and your fingers are still fast, fast enough to snatch a handkerchief; a loose bracelet; a matched set of gloves; and only then can you breathe. just in case. you've still got it, just in case.

[witherrosetrio]

it burns, it burns, it burns, so you dance on hot coals and twist a screw or sand an edge. the walls have ears and the sky has eyes and the neighbor a crossbow aimed at your spine, so you cannot rest, no, cannot resist another trap here, another wire here—this one’s rigged to blow—a new invention here, and this one might change everything, and this one might turn you and everyone you love into ash, and this one might wrap your home and your heart in a giant bubble that will keep you safe forever—ha, as if! the planet hurls through space a million miles an hour so you have to move with it, right, you have to, or else, or else, or else. 

[witherrosetrio]

the first thing anybody ever asks is so, where do you come from? and sometimes, how long are you staying? it’s not hard to see why: you weren’t built for this, for grey skies and cobblestones and grass that never turns green no matter how much the sun begs it to. you hide yourself in coats and smiles and it’s never enough, no matter how you duck your head or how many of their bags you carry.

most days you just stick your hands into the soil or the pages of a book. the earthworms don’t care about your last name or how many times you smile when you pass them on the street. skin-on-skin and the space between, those are things meant for people, real people, people who have laughed so much they carry it in their flesh. it’s instinctive to them, you hear--they can do things like friendship without having to scrawl out calculus for it. what you wouldn’t give to be amongst them, a ghost if not a person, a fly on the wall, a sunflower craning its neck towards hands in hands, hands through hair, lips pressed soft to wrists.

peace, peace. one day, you’ll be good. you press your nose to the window, all fog and melt, and you hunger.

[witherrosetrio]

you used to kick anthills just for fun. find a big old pile of sand and stomp on it, watch the sand and the little guys just fly everywhere. they’d fall on their backs and flail around, and you’d laugh at them ‘cause they were too stupid to get back up. and then you’d squash them, finger to exoskeleton to soil, and you’d rub your fingers together to see if you could pick out the different bug organs ‘cause people have got them so the little guys have gotta have them, too.

it's last one standing wins, isn't it? you know all about death, hell, it’s been in every whisper since you could twaddle your little two feet too fast and too far, know all about how you twist something wrong and then it’s bye-bye forever. your brother used to flinch when they took the knife through the throat of a lamb, used to gasp as it twitched and screamed and stopped, just stopped, gone. you’d get up on your tip toes and balance over the railings, reaching out to dip our fingers into the crimson like a baptism. if you had a knife, you’d run it over the flesh of your own hand, just to see what it would feel like, what it felt like, to have the blood sucked out of you and left on the table with your head lolling around, eyes tilted back into your skull. you want to feel the bloom of pain, the hiss and sting of it, and you want to keep cutting in bold defiance of the natural order of things. 

is this love? is it love when she cradles your hand and tells you where to cut? is it love when you kneel at his feet, the way the metal-on-wood of your father’s staff on the ground makes your breath freeze as a nail awaits a hammer? do you love them? does the deer love the wolf with its throat in its jaws? does the butcher the knife; the chopping block; the bone? your sister mocked you yesterday and when you broke her arm you spent the next week with broken legs and the rest of your life fearing your name in your father’s mouth. you think that maybe you just love tearing everything apart, digging your hands into the flesh and sinew of it, and you love the look in their eyes when they realize they don’t know how to put it back.