We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

(Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides)

“Love & even death”/ heart suicidal

Gorgeous— hallucinogens make rainbows
Without rain. Some
Colors that don’t flow. Together. I know
Because I’ve been a girl with dreams
Instead of a head. Ahead you always were in the
Miracle game, the blame game. Leaving the ladder plain.
My dreams shed their skin as I skimmed through
The idle the dead; inside out. We have identical
Skins; alien hearts. All this praise of
The impossible, a dagger-ed organ rotten deep deep.
Creeping. Through
Fault lines lighting up under the midnight
Sun dark. Let us bury our dead dreams.
So we can dream again with headless heads
Leaping ahead, threading undead. Being a
Beautiful little fool— the best thing an
Imprisoned girl can be in this underworld
We call life we call earth.

I understand love. I understand death.

Cut it in half and the half in half— like a magician cuts me up
In half to make wonders in two separate boxes.
No. Not coffins.
My feet move.
My eyes open. My eyes wide. My eyes high.
Dark pupils can swallow galaxies.
Spinning in spirals.

I understand love. I understand death.

The many hearts I carry have been suicidal. Stop.
My heart attempts to escape, to fit inside the body of a
Mastadon. A dinosaur. So we could escape to a simpler
Time raw. A factory smoke virgin earth. Swallowed in green
Beautiful dirt. Before humans could touch and destroy.
The tree. The river and the rock. In the
Dark.

I understand love. I understand death.

Hearts pumping idle.
They want to jump out of body like fish
Who think they can leap and breathe. Outside water. Outside
Oxygen. Wishing I could befriend the alarm, the alarum.
Wish I could
Escape to a simpler time. Would have been safer in the
Hands of ancient monsters than in the conscience of humans.

I understand love. I understand death.

All these tears running I am running out of salt. I must
Have put my heart in a vault. Not
Abandon myself to fade to dry to rot while
Miracles in movies mock me in my dusty mind replaying
Lost and found. Scenes of memories while I’m carrying
Deadweight of some eternal sunshine from some spotful
Mind. Mimicking hearts suicidal.

I understand love. I understand death.

We are all prisoners in our own decaying bodies
Moving around thinking we can escape to find peace
Leaving around our messy pieces already deceased
Like dead skin we carry on our boundaries creased.

I understand love and even death.

A cold heart heavy

Resting in peace
With my black ink tears
Decorated with paint.
My skin. Aging slowly to hide
The youth I’ve lived in.
Singing softly my tongue
A snake a piranha a shark—
A chameleon. Most definitely.
Rising to the occasion.
I bite or strangle before we get too
Tangled up up up we go from here,
Now that we’ve added some salt
Some toxicity to our bond invisible
At times evil in its nature
At times as soft and creamy
As an expensive glazing fluid.
Thread on my skin
Let you destroy all there is.
I don’t get where I finish
And you begin. A unit made up
Of disasters; add some dragon
Fire, we’ve been in deep, deep
Seated worry. In well-rehearsed calamity.
I dress in tragedy so when it arrives,
I maintain my smile without a salty frown;
Without a cold heart heavy.