and freckles

hunched at the

sticky kitchen table

my back hurts.

i'm hunching and

scratching lines,

separating my hair

at inopportune places

twisting the back of

my scalp and feeling

my mouth, hard and dry.

my back is hurting

a long work day,

loud voices, louder

thrusting music

in beats with human

hearts, apparently.

old lady lace curtains

and neon paintings

with heidi as signed

my friends are somewhere

amidst the mist of

hollow smoke and

stumbly drunk wet

feelings, peelings

and cursed eyelashes

spending their

intelligence on an

unimportant conversation.

elation and inflation,

inflate your mind,

half drunken cheap

bottles and the people

outside puffing something

important, talk of time

and god and someone near

me wants doritos.

still fiddling in my

dirty hair i'm the girl at

the party writing a poem

at a table; everyone wants

to know what i'll say.

no one wants to talk to me.

feeling strange and vain

and plagued, comparison

killing, never shedding,

always exposing, always

vulnerable, always hiding

this body, this face

and filtering ideas and

rhymes and glittering

chimes in the doorway

doors opening and drafting

and being out of place,

insecure and prettily

putting the hair

behind my ear its

my charmful thing

being known

to flee thinking

about him and me

thinking about people

i don't know and the

boy with the blue lights

coming from his

fingertips and

the girl with bright hair

and fair skin and

freckles little kisses and

his kisses, my pencil

getting flatter and

duller the dancing

getting bigger and

stronger. little girl faces

entranced at the

movement, their stillness.

all this motion and i don't

really fit in here.

i move fast, my hand,

writing because if i don't,

it will all get lost and all these

moments never happened

except in a faded

drunken nostalgia

of someone's spoken

memory on a porch

over an afternoon

cigarette, always coming,

always going.

and with these moments,

my scribbles, her memories,

so much happily lost

among the world

that lives in the night, that

we barely remember, that

holds the strangest sweet

spot in our hearts we will

sadly and fondly look

back on vaguely tasting

of a thing you tell your

children

not beautiful;

but there.