i

Hear my joints dislocate, coming apart at the notion of sunlight. It falls and it settles in pictures of loveliness, golden tree branches and hints of leaves; of autumn, of spring.

I am so tall in the water. My legs are never-ending, crooked lines of peachskin- watching my fingers draw out ripples until they strain and buckle and fall into the cool. I’ll touch my toes and loop my figure and I’ll make giant ripples, abhorring fallen leaves and sending shivers of blue through his legs.

It’s a faded crimson red holding my breasts, tugging my hips and leaving my ribcage bare to the current. It’s smudged lipstick and smeared blood to him; it’s the soft of petals and the heat of summer to me.

ii

With dirt up my thighs and crushed flowers beneath my elbows we sat in echoes of bark; lit with the little light the leaves could spare. We were a picture. We were lovers in the dirt, near the stream, soft nothing above and heaviness beneath us.
It came tumbling down by my toes, unblinking eyes and gleaming fins. Don’t, I whispered, it looks scared. He chuckled and ripped the hook from its lip. I dug my heels into the ground, the ochre staining every spiralling print in my skin.

He beamed and cast it, splashing water on my cheeks, back into the water. Then he took mine in his sweaty palm, pulling me towards the earth until my head thudded back and his lips found place on mine.

My hair was in disarray amongst the hot soil and our bare skin was simply a break in the pattern of greens and browns. We were puerile but we were in lust up to our wrists lapping at our hipbones and pressing into the connections our bones make.
He told the earth behind my shoulder he loved it, keeping the wind from rising goose bumps on my stomach. I love you too, I whimpered, whispered, prayed, as though I was the roots of the bowing flowers and twisted trees. I couldn’t find the sun because I didn’t need its warmth.

iii

I’m inviting ants to my honey soaken lips, imagining them march in lines up my chest, my neck and gathering in a dark, moving mass. I’d take them into the hollow, cave of my mouth and swallow until all I taste is a melange of blood and broken legs. I’d kill, I’d do just that, but you’d never guess.

Sometimes I forget my real name, like the way people forget the date winter begins or summer ends. And sometimes I forget which is my bedroom- like someone might forget their dog’s birth date. I don’t know why I forget, I just do.

One morning there was blood on my singlet, I bathed with it until the bath water was a murky pink and I sank down and felt it ease into my pores. Then I opened my eyes and I knew whose blood it was, I knew and it scared me.

I never remember the things I want to; my little sister’s birthday, where I hid my diary, how to do algebra. Instead I remember dark fragments of screams, of scarred limbs, of blood. Oh, the blood sends shivers down my spine, but sometimes I crave it. My bones press out against my skin, threatening to break through and sometimes I give in.

For moments everything is sharp and vivid then it all falls away. I clutch at the lines but they blur and run through my fingers like heavy sand, dust in my eyes, filling my lungs until I fall too.

And wake up with scars on my thighs and heavy limbs.

iv

I fell in love with the yellow painted lines on the road; I silently ached as the cars pressed them deeper into the bitumen. My existence was the bright lights trembling to light the dark sky- bluntly ignoring the stars and shunning the moon. Traffic was my background noise, my melody and the strangers, the busy road-raged strangers were my only family.

Some nights I’d steal glances through fogged windows, tainted windows, dirty windows and crave and wish aloud I was them. One night;

She had blue eyes, no, no she has ocean eyes, summer sky eyes and they were light and fluttered with eyelashes. Her skin was ivory and laid across her face just right, the perfect background for her features. I almost brang my fingers to the cool glass, almost brang them to her baby lips, but then she was just a blur of a pretty picture and the burning taillights of a car.

I kneeled down to the lashings of yellow and told them

She’s the one.

They mocked me until my knuckles were blistered potatoes.

v

I wonder what you were thinking about before your heart stopped still and your breath lost its warmth. Before the rope wrung patterns in your neck and the white wash of your bedroom wall faded.

Before you weren’t a boy anymore- but a corpse, a cadaver, a carcass with blank blue eyes and dark hair that fell among them.

When I heard, I laughed. I fell to the ground in knots, in stitches and hysterics. But don’t worry- it’s just because I’m fucked up. I cried last night, I cried because I never let myself. Mostly I cried for death and the way it creeps up my skin but never really reaches my heart.

I imagine your pretty girlfriend, lying on her shower floor bare skinned with her fingers shaking, teeth rattling. I imagine her pressing her forehead against the glass sliding doors, fuck, fuck, fuck in that high pitched monotone. She’s clutching her ribcage and pressing in and she’s letting her fingers wander to the beat against her skin. The beat you used to feel against your own chest and she’s imagining it’s yours, she’s fucking wishing it was yours, she’s aching and she knows from the delicacy it’s hers and she’s knows from the fragility it’s hers and she knows yours is gone. Not delicate or fragile, but still.

She knows its stupid- but she tears into her pores, her smooth skin and watches the blood stain her flawless canvas. For a moment he’s alive, for a moment she’s in love, for a moment she isn’t scared.

She’s crumpling like paper, creases and tears and spilt ink across her limbs, across her chest her blood is rushing to her scars and painting her red. Her hair is wet and in her face and she’s a mess.

Were you thinking of her?