a length I didn't intend

You've got me in an odd humor - scorched hair and blackened tears, but a giant smile that's genuine: both poles flying flags of mine. Wait...   I'm trying to delineate my confusion for you, so listen. I think I feel you. I keep reaching to the back of my neck feeling for your scab-like ingenue - fooling with that flap. I'm sure it's not a mole, but if it is, I just know it's cancer, which is so oft-used a metaphor no one remembers the disease. You're some insect's egg awaiting morning. My finger encircles the bole - I could dig it out right now, before it burrows to my heart, but think of it: I'll be working, put on some crazy expression, and keel over! Exactly how I want to die! So I'll go make faces in the mirror, and figure me a striking outfit. You're a tick, an eight-legged squatter. When you wave at me, you flip me off, scratch your ass, and the other hands all write contradictory messages that you send all at once. Are you sucking my blood? Or am I suckling you? Is there a masculine form of 'teat'? It wouldn't be appropriate. I briefly consider using a match but I would burn myself, and I'd have no one's sympathy. Walking out into the cold, I pull a scarf warm about the two of us. We face the world together, in fact if not in symbolism. I cling to that, and will rise to the responsibility I've invented in it. Come little one, I will lead you. Come tiny friend, watch the fireflies with me, do you wish you were beautiful? I laugh and you sit there. My laughter dies and I think perhaps your silence indicates deeper thoughts. You're thinking of leaving me, aren't you? When your stomach is full you'll drop right off, find your way to a tree where you will hang for years until your hunger rises again. I think I'd rather you stay but will I notice when you're gone? I am amazed at this reaction - could these be my still hands typing? I have won, for once, an ending without pain... I regret this uninspired bond, I had hopes and you were disappointed, This is your issue, and if it means so much, then I'll not call your name, and you won't call my house, and I can throw out all your incoherent notes. Everything about you made no sense - maybe that's why it didn't occur to me that riding piggyback isn't like holding hands.I really don't know what the hell happened here.  Somehow it turned into a poem about a recent girl encounter, buuuut I think that it was way too long, so please give me some input - should I make it something much less directly personal?  remove the comments not fitting with the theme?  ehhhh!  Send me a girl who doesn't see every obstacle as a detour! Written October 13th, 2001 © on Oct 13 2001 10:09 AM PST   0 • 8