Friday, March 13, 2009

dancer

The dancer
She is dancing
She is spinning
With her arms open wide
She is on pointe
Dipping perfectly
She is smiling through the lies
And the only
Time she's happy
Is when she's dancing
On the stage
Amid the whispers
And the staring
She can find herself again

Turning around
And around
And around

She didn't even see
That she
Was falling

The dancer
She is trying
She is tripping
She is wishing on a star
For a reason
For an answer
For why truth is so far gone
And the only
Thing she really knows
Is people never really change
She is drowning
In the music
She's losing it
She can feel it in her bones

Turning around
And around
And around

She didn't even see
That she
Was falling


The dancer
She is Crying
She has tripped up
She's fallen further than before
But she keeps dancing
With a fire
She knows she can prove them wrong
And when things get hard
And she catches her breath
She smiles and closes her eyes
They mean nothing
She tells herself
The night is always darkest
Before the dawn

Turning around
And around
And around

She didn't even see
That she
Was falling

Turning around
And around
And around

She didn't even see
That she
Was falling

Friday, March 6, 2009

i don't know what the heck this is

What would you do if I faded away?
If I gave up on everything?
If I sat down and refused to move?
If I stopped smiling?
If I cried my heart out?

What would you do if I ran away?
If I hid from all my troubles?
If I stopped caring?
If I stopped singing to the moon?
If I stopped dancing with the stars?

What would you do if I stopped loving you?
If I hurt myself?
If I refused to mend a broken heart?
If I ignored you?
If I walked away?

What would you do?
Would you track me down?
Would you hold me tight?
Would you kiss my tears away?
Would you mend my broken heart?
Would you soothe my troubles?
Would you chase my fears away?
Would you dance with the stars?
Would you sing to the moon?
Would you love me?

Sunday, March 1, 2009

paper dolls


Once there was a girl,
He told her that her skin was too pale and that her eyes
were too sad. He told her to wear colors other than black.

She went home that night and dragged the blade of her pocket knife
across the white of her inner thigh, watching as scarlet bloomed to surface.

She called him on the telephone and said,
‘You would be proud, I’m wearing red tonight.’

She thought he laughed, but it sort of sounded like a sob.



There was something beautiful about the rain, and on stormy days,
he would always hold her on his couch and twirl his fingers in her hair.

Sometimes she would feel a drop of wet on her cheek, and she told him
that maybe he should check his roof, because it was leaking.

It took her eight times to figure out that they weren’t raindrops, but his teardrops.

The next time it rained, she stayed home and sat on her driveway,
letting the sky water saturate her shirt and soak through to her bones.



He taught her a lot of big words, like
‘quintessential’ and ‘superfluous’ and ‘agoraphobia’.

She decided that she was probably a little agoraphobic
because whenever she was without him, she was a nervous wreck.

But maybe that was just the whole ‘love’ thing and not an anxiety disorder.



The stories he told her were always so promising, about little girls
with orange lantern cheeks and eggshell lips. He would call them paper dolls.

But at the end of every one, the paper doll girl wouldn’t find her prince,
and her heart would flicker and fade like dying lights.

‘Am I your paper doll girl?’ She asked once, watching as he bit at his chapped lips.
I’m pretty sure that was when he started to crumble.

‘Only if you want to be,’ he rasped, and let go of her hand that he had been holding.

A breathy sigh left her. ‘I don’t, because I want to find you.’

‘You should have started looking a long time ago, then.’



The day after he left, she made a chain of paper dolls and wrote ‘me’ on every one.

She was going to send them to him, but she forgot. They’re still on the corner
of her desk, collecting dust beside her broken vase of dead tulips.

She wouldn’t know where to mail them, anyway.
Because she still hasn’t found him