Pageants Drunk

I once was a sad child. Loose in her clothes. Lost in her gift. The ventriloquist for a hollow woman. I slid inside her wooden flesh and tried to imagine how the puppet might live.

Soft men poking around inside a torso too rigid. Hungry mosquitoes stinging only callouses. Fooled by the softness of her vagina into believing that penetration had begun.

The blood on the rim of her underwear. Smiling so new. The density in her goodbye. A wrecking ball at the back of her throat. In stitches of skin that had put her over budget.

As ready to be loved as any child has ever wished.

I was going through the letters. Frail sign language of empty hands. Loose elastic at the ankles of the metaphor. In tight braids the sex occurred. Without apology. In rented tuxedos it slowed danced. To the songs I hate that get stuck in my head even so.

I'll say it's because no one listens. He'll say it's that no one says. What they're thinking. No one can hear you if you're afraid to say.

There in the time travel of our hearts the contracts are signed. Ghosts remit their payments. To the mortgage dubbed life.

The walls barked their shadows. On long leashes made of orgasm. The windows put on their clothes. Slowly. In tiny hiccups of underwear. Soliciting an invitation. To get rained on again.

Tiny footprints leave us lost. The big ones we get stuck in.

Nothing ever looked so small as we did then. The phone in the corner of the room positing dead conversations into my thoughts. The eyes of the bed darting to avoid the sight of our naked asses. As we groaned and greased our way to happiness. In dubious epiphanies. In trenchcoats resmebling sex. The shallow of emotion revealing itself in sneezes of skin.

Colors in the voices I've outlined. Becoming clear.

We draw ourselves in pencil. We search for the ink. Labelling every encounter. By the distance it creates between the past and the future. Lost in there.

Have you every heard. The sound of waiting. Have you ever found the empty cradle.

and wondered how you'd ever sleep again.

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Everything I want is inside this notebook. Inside the choke of this glass. Everything I want is another lesson in letting go.

A perfect lie. A grand addiction in rainbow colored suspenders. Haughty clowns in flagrant baths of liquor. Judge the seldom beauty contest of everyday women. A bit of panty on their fingertips. A hint of tit in each score. An apt bouquet of miscarriage in every winner.