There was a girl with skin made of glass. Anyone could see inside it. Anyone at all.

The light would shine through forming a prism inside her. Colors she couldn't name. Her clothes wearing her. In placid marathons. People. Like black under her skin. Turning her into a mirror. Nothing to see except what is there.

With heavy eyes weighted in the seduction. The thump of winter in a fading sun. Glass flesh. Coloring itself in by the light that's always searching. For confirmation of its existence.

Lazy storms forget to rain. There's never lightning anymore. Just grass. Too green to be legitimate. And people like little plastic army men. Frozen in their killing. Or their surrender.

Both.

If she lets you see all the way inside her. Broken being so much less spectacular when there are no pieces left to step on.

Consumed with the dangling participle healthy veins never wonder after.

There was a girl with skin made of glass. Everything inside could see out. Everything outside could see in.

And she had always felt sorry for those that didn't know what an easy life it could be.

Little gods dressed up in the robes of big ones. Like all the dresses she's tried on and taken off. Slow ambulances that saved her when she didn't want to be.

She sees how they remember. In dialogue balloons drawn above their heads. In frames nimble with irony. Broken cameras take pictures of the people we've never been.

The girl with glass skin still waiting for someone to see through her.

We had enormous amounts of faith. In everything we were able to prove. There are times allotted for being yourself. Until then just try to be patient. Each call is answered in the order it's received.

We'll crack like paint does when it dries too fast. Making what was ugly, uglier yet. The truth in single servings. The world squeezed out in fast food condiment packets. Onto to stale bread.

I'm Jello. I look sweet, but I'm not.

I take his temperature from the outside in. Assuming it's coldest in the middle. Time prescribes its stoic medicine. In bottles I can't open. In words I can't read. As if we shouldn't know what makes us well. Lest we find it on our own.

The enormous lives we started with shrunk down like 501's. Poured into the holes and hardened there. Until infinity finally decides we're worth a look.

Arrows on her face. Libelous lips. Poor janitors soft in the mess. Don't sleep. Don't try to name those children. Tiny anchors keeping huge ships in dock. By the whisper of dead demons. By the funnel in conversation. The toil of dead things with limbs still quite erect. We were always there.

Stupid tigers hunting without their stripes. Lazy abortions letting the child be born. In proud confessions that shame those dead saints. The drumsticks still on their plates. As the last ice cube melts in their glass. The future running on weak knees toward an uncontrolled intersection.

The trivia of me. Stuck under their fingernails. The ugly comes in sneezes. It gets stuck in my face.

The hours vomit up on themselves in a fetid ritual. Crayola rejects build their own box of colors. The pages dressed for the dance memorizing the taillights of the limo.

I don't know. Don't even want to know why. It's so easy to laugh lately.

Sex is a souvenir.

The eel was looking quite dapper in his vagina tuxedo. A mucous bow tie knotted perfectly under his collar. Inscribed like tiny scars into every word he tried to say. His tongue made of molasses. His eyes spilled into his head at auction.

No bids.

Following the lotteries in her head. The junkyard is where she found her prettiest dress. Stone pantyhose. Lopsided heels. Flat-chested economics buy more stocks than they sell.

The hunt. Coming apart. The selling like cellophane over her thoughts. Everything sealed inside a transparent armor. They know. They see who I am.

But can't feel it.

The sweat of dirty underwear dripping from the sealing. Failing staples in this thin catalog. Pictures of us in clothes we've never worn.

The eel in his hybrid car. Looking for a gas station. He could go the rest of the way on the feet he doesn't have. If only they were there.

The crack of irony's whip all he can hear in ears he doesn't possess.

But he is listening with all his other parts. And pieces.

Nothing is ever as good as the salesman said it would be. But then again, it doesn't have to be for us to want it.

Some would say I never change. I guess I don't in any way that can be counted.

The tear in the paper bag. Your lunch trailing behind you in mayonnaise shadows. How do you change that? Why even try to . The spoiled footprints are easiest to find when lost. Close your eyes and listen for the smell of sadness.

Write the word as if someone's listening. And hope that no one is.

Of course it's stupid. And cliche. Because life is. And life is my only frame of reference. Itchy encyclopedias of men passing on the shoulder as I wait to turn left. The sticky legs of crickets fouled with circumstantial songs.

It's easy to write. Just sleep with eyes open. It's easy to love. Just write as if you'll never have to read it.

You have to die to be brilliant. Have to live to get the chance. Everything in between is just funeral arrangements.

The pistol in her garter breathed loud against her dress. As she hunted for ammunition.

We were buying our salad one leaf at a time. Painting the lettuce the colors of dead animals. Imagining time travel in one kiss increments. Small prescriptions of salvation in doses expensive enough to swallow. In orange bottles with our names printed on them. Like there is a plan. Even if it's only the one we've made.

I was listening to the song wondering whatever happened to turning left without permission. The arrow is what I covet. Go. Go now. As fast as you want. The others. They have to wait. Rubbing their dirty stones between their fingers as my heels scrape the chalk that drew these frail competitions under our feet.

We were sitting at the bar. Imagining the food was better. Or that we hated each other less. Certain that the stools were lower than we remembered. Or that the clock on the wall was in the last stages of rigor mortis.

So many dead things between us.

All beds were a morgue. All eyes coroners. In fabulous funerals I'd watch as though they were my own.

Medicated moments twist lives into tiny knots.

Not to be undone. Too many mistakes we'd regret so much more had we never made them.

The monkey was comfortable with his heels on. Betting on the skirt. Lost in discovering a penis amongst scribbles on her thighs. Deciding. In apt digressions. Which habit would be best to worship.

The monkey was lounging all right on its parable of Eden. Hands of god snapping in the wings of every bird. Jesus Christ starring in a reality show about children of absentee fathers.

She slowly shed her men. The way all women do. Wiping at the blood pouring from within her. The ignorance of evolution. Seeing the world as bigger than it is.

There's the monkey on his pedestal. Trying on dresses already worn. There's the world in little legions. Diseases too small to love. The certainty of her shortest skirt. In fairy tales of sober little girls scribble across concrete summers.

Comas not long enough to make me remember.

The taffy on the boardwalk as it would mix with the smell of grandma. Funnel cakes frying amongst her hair. Her heels as they'd jab the wood. In long strolls that took us nowhere.

All those tickets we collected for prizes we'd never win.

At ten after one he took off his watch. But was still too sober to close his eyes. She read his penis as she would any textbook. Scanning for facts. Answers to questions not yet asked.

Some people don't sleep. They just close their eyes and lie there until their brain surrenders. Faint comas rescue the heroes of poor dime store novellas. In the hiss of quiet songs too commercial for their craft. Domesticated demons retrieve their claws from between the condoms.

No one's alive. No one's dead. Just the faint aroma of assless underwear and the toilet choking down the last of our vomit.

As the morning browses what's left of our conversation.

When she's a hooker, she's a mean one. All stiletto heels and yeast infections. It's extra if you want her to say your name. And even more to have her sound like she means it.

When she's a clown. She's a jolly one. Carrying her foamy red nose with her wherever she goes. Swimming in circles inside those big shoes. Naming her character after the scars on her arms.

She's always a word or two away from drunk. The magistrate of sober a clockwork orange of choices. Force feed me what I love until I hate it. I'll live, but I won't recover.

When she's awake she watches them sleep. In deft surrenders that proliferate weak women. Casual manias cure the stockings from open legs.

They're born of her, but not her children. The calm politics of touch debating. What, if anything, will come after.

The certainty of strangers.

The simple acts of algebra that always prove we're still alone.

The hooker in a child's stale pajamas turning stockings into philosophy.

In the little nightmares of skin we call each other.

The clown between a woman's thighs pulling out that endless scarf.

In equations of color we say we don't see anymore.

An urgent piss languishes at the back of her throat. The riddle still a riddle. The answer still a risk she's not willing to take. The inches between villains and lovers somehow immeasurable now that I'm one or the other. Maybe both.

His eyes flutter like the wings of a starving moth. Trapped inside this world within the world. Where living is only speculation.

We'll say it's been too long. And we might be right. We'll say it's too dark out there. We'd never find each other anyway.

A rubber band becomes her throat. In scowls of skin thick that pretend they still breathe. The fuse of pantyhose duly lit. Bombs fitted to her crotch. In deliberate surrenders.

In slow stages of brittle it lets go. Rotten fingertips of touch fall apart trying to hold. Stalwart manias confuse love and circumstance.

Tell me I am alone and I will believe you, but still lie to you and say that I don't. Because there's still time. There's still sex enough. To find the woman in all this child.

Words pretend. And so do people. That we can begin again.

I watch the Simpsons. I drink. Negotiating with delirium. Or not caring. I don't know the difference. There are barrettes to sweetly hold the moments in place. Small caucuses of humiliation that form the foundation of happiness.

I stir the rice for too long. Adding ingredients arbitrarily. Watching movies it seems I've already seen under different names. Eating meals I'm certain I've previously consumed.

Searching for then. In loud songs with a soft way about them. That mutant gravity too sober in the corner of my heart as I try to start the next sentence. I used to be immune. But now the infection comes so easy. The spoil of potted plants with no room left to grow.

Oh, I say so many things. The pungent lies of creation. Ink. Ink everywhere. Trying to decide the words.

I watch whatever on. I don't listen. I tell them to stop. But I like it when they keep going.

The perjury of self-quotation flaunts its irony in doses of skin. An hourglass fumbling with the assumption of time. The measure and the relative distance from this end to the next beginning.

The best medicines don't even try to cure. They only perpetuate the disease. As sick as we are, at least we're something.

The dubious threat of truth ubiquitous and feeble. In synonyms of too much the same. I stretch my short arm out toward the bucket. Knowing the thirst goes deeper than the well.

She tells the hurricane to wait. She's not ready for it yet. Little women written into the diaries of big girls. The franchise of happiness sells its two dollar colas at the concession stand of used condoms.

I've had all kinds of sex. The meaningless. The privileged and the kind that takes two flushes to get rid of. But the fact is, love comes in only two flavors. Bland or bitter. And all these wisdom's I've gained are worthless.

When I'm standing at that vending machine some call people. With nothing but a mangled dollar bill and a thirst they for something sweeter.

I tell myself I'm not the only one.

But somehow I know that I am.

I try to pretend there's not a dick in my mouth. Or at least, that I like the taste.

But I've failed again.

On her toadstool. With the flies buzzing about her vagina. thick legs snatch their dinner from the cloud of biting insects sucking at her insides. The needle goes in both directions. The poison flows just as well from host to parasite. Clumped on her toadstool. In kneads of self. The fable tells her to bet on the tortoise, but experience tells her most morals lie.

The world sways slightly to one side. In little sips. And in big ones. The pillows stiffen under her head. A lonely prelude to sleep.

Inside her bucket. With every peek through the hole gravity steals another eye.

What is there to see? What is there to find. The empty cooking classes of citrus housewives. Their angry uterus's sick with fertility pills. The orphaned bottles of scotch that make us remember the men who helped them make us.

problem was. we never hated each other enough to tell truth. Never loved one another enough to lie.

spit was greeting card enough. For any kind of occasion. yesterday was as far into the future as we were willing to go.

drunk was only a metaphor regarding misplaced underwear. Paper hearts scribbled into all her bras. A frenzied Picasso in each of her orgasms. Her life stripped down to only the colors. Brushes full of pigment left to harden beside the pencils she'd drawn them with.

drunk was just our only way of saying I love you. All of our best friends were made of latex.

Perfect enough for me.

He kneaded the calm in small libations. Drawing on and erasing in the same strokes. Isn't that the difference between sex and love? How much you're willing to steal?

When I was in love it was always more a devil than a god. The cloven hoof my ancestors had forbidden me to eat too great of an inspiration. When I was young enough to still fall in love I never did actually fall. Not without a rope knotted to something stronger than myself. And in that way, I've never truly been in love. At least not in the way most people sink.

Or else I'm just a liar. Who doesn't know the difference. A frail whore rattling in her chastity belt. Since someone I can barely remember swallowed the key.

The world is what make me young. What keeps me old. In all the ways that prove it's not enough just to have what you want.

She scrambles amongst the tuxedos. A lopsided drink her scale. She slithers through the gowns. Her isolation the measure of her thoughts. A word away from hating herself.

She rushes to finish her drink before someone notices her sitting there alone.

Dreams to sleep enough. Porcelain collars on steel necks. The nightmare wore its best gown for the occasion. Confident heels clicked all the way up the stairs. Until the door made us deaf.

There were heroes. In damp boots. Villains in moldy capes. All drawn across the moment in thick outlines. Nervous to be colored in.

The quake of sex. In pungent packets of fetid potpourri. Spoiled perfume of the lonely. dropping its dirty pennies into empty graves. The number there on her cheek in blisters bright and clear.

A backyard full of men still to be planted. She tilts her empty watering can toward the dying seeds.

Answer. Answer me.

Sometimes I don't write. And wait for the words instead. Dining on little hiccups of vomit not brutal enough to breach my lips. My stomach empty except for the hunger that keeps it full.

We never turn the lights on. We never even bother with the curtains. Seeing is so easy. All I want to do is make it harder. Turn the fruit inside out. Make the pit the focus. That is where it came from after all. All that meat. Full of sugar. All because the stone grew itself a soft skin.

Soft over hard. Like everything is.

Hard to see.

The chafe of butterfly wings against the tornado as it moves toward us. In gulps of intuition. We're far. And near. And all things in between. Ripples shudder from the stone making that meat soft again. We're still hard at the beginning. We're still far from knowing. Why it's this easy to assume what couldn't be true.

The long, blond hair of barbie dolls swoons the carpet. Her tiny shoes get stuck between my teeth. As I chew on the possibility of blame. For the sake of it. Because I need an enemy. Now more than ever.

Stale dogma of touch all that there is left to worship. The germ between her look and her word. Bits of cancer looking for a host. Finding only victims. They die too quickly. My disease gets so bored.

The skin I've chartered for this trip. Glossy lollipops uncomfortable in their cellophane dresses. Stranded in that last square of hopscotch for want of a stone to throw. For lack of another foot to land on.

It's not hopeless. Just hard to imagine ever wanting to feel that way again. Caught in a hole in the nest. The tip of the condom tormenting a ripe egg.

It's not paper, but it feels that same. Trying to decide how much longer to wait.

The soft collars that we are left to wear. So much heavier than they were when.

The frivolity of men in all phases of sex. No longer astonishes. But it's still loud enough to hear without every having to listen.

Away. away. Creamy kittens painted orange. Claws melting under the fury of the itch. Sour moons splint the broken windows. Dragging the glass behind them on stretcher made of skin. Every day is coming. Monsters in stiletto heels. Every day is leaving us. The second drawn in crayon over the terrible beige of life.

I'm a monster. In small sneakers. Sneaking up on myself. I'm a hero. With too many weapons to choose from.

Away. away. Like I've always said. The lottery of having lived. All pay. Few win.

Three's my turning point. There's my education. Standing there like some hooker waiting for me to step closer. Solicit the pleasure in five dollar increments. Until no amount of money can buy it back again.

You're a whore. And a wise man. Your heart as hard as your penis is smart.

I'm bored. I'm bored with all this sadness.

Big hills in small steps. Short walks over a long distance. Like drunk sex. Needing to be naked. From the inside out. Born into oblivion. One stranger at a time. Falsely casual sex. A perfect dissection of each motive of every hole the female body compulsively flaunts. Bright, little thunderstorms erupt from quiet skin. She wants to be penetrated. Sex. The incessant sting of angry yellow jackets.

Stabbing until numbness arrives. Leaving no barbs inside her. As she'd always hoped they would. No souvenirs at all, except the dead skin that fills those empty spaces.

Just the tantrums of lonely men gnawing on her nipples until blood became milk. Just flaccid penises stabbing at their dead mothers until all women were as useless.

Machine guns of flesh trying to make every hole in her bigger. Resentful because there are more than they can fill.

She had made her wish.

A penny seemed expensive.

seldom comes on crooked heels. swimming softly in open fists. no funerals. nor weddings. not celebrations at all. these sweet restraints. licorise handcuffs chew their way through my skin. I'm not even there. My breath. The parachute to that empty dress. I can't prove I've ever worn.

woken up. by the birds in the tree outside. those small windows let so much in. the sheets. folding in meager orgams across my face. as morning dreams pretend i've slept enough. to know.

i've been the alternative. I've been the answer. to questions they'd never asked. eager lungs sucking down the air that's left. Between pages still untruned..

I'm a fossil. A remnant. An instrument of their evolution. To be dug up.

I'm history. An indicator of all things lost.

A little after eleven all these poisons lose their appeal.

I somehow thought going away would change me. Like going under water. Holding my breath. For as long as I could. Nothing permanent. Just something so that the surface would be reward enough. One big breath. Then a long, long time until the next.

Like how everything is.

Stale until you gamble with it. The clamor of slot machines between the words as I lose. And lose. And lose again. Until everything is art. Little sparkles of sleep embedded in the thick paper of life is drawn upon

The wise of the owl in bouts of somnambulism. Sex. Finger paints for the flesh. Crusty numbers heal across her skin. A rainbow of scars wither under bulbs long since burnt out.

If I could see. If I could have all the words.

Then I'd know what to say.

But I'm still waiting.

Pretty freckles on her arms pull her underwear down over her thighs. He's there. Not quite inside her. But near enough that she blinks a little quicker.

Her irises swim in bowls of milk to big for them. Snap. Crackle. And popping to the motion of her thoughts. As they flicker across her stare. Bits of movies we'll never live to see. But we were in them. If you look close. We were there when the cue cards went blank. Suffocating for lack of our own words. Sex the foul antiseptic for all rotten flesh. Chunks of dialogue lost to closed-captions of the heart. I'm always deaf when it comes time to hear what hasn't been said. Always mute when it's time to tell them.

What I've been thinking.

The pretty of sad songs as they combine with cold sheets. Metabolizing slowly in the Arctic of my abdomen. Casual dilemmas. Like how close we might've come. Frail ironies. Like how far away we actually were. The chirp of crickets outside my window and inside my head. Buckles easing open against the force of the slightest touch. The weight of the air before a storm. The dark clicking its heels to flee this oz.

There's no place like home.

The perfunctory orgasms of cold sheets quickly dust off storage whore cunts. In a sweeping sermon it teaches us how to save ourselves without having to rescued.

That little girl in little boy shorts. She's yours. Not anyone else's. His trench coat shrugs. The weaker we are the better this is.

Those windows. Always with the lights on. Now I know why.

With woolly eyes she bit her nails. Too far down. Small arcs of flesh exposed too tender to withstand the world. The stomp of worn boots as they shimmy over the slick of her walk. A library of diagnoses under her pillow.

One more.

One more.

One more drink.

And then I'll be able to sleep.

Or at least wake up as if I had.

I pull on that familiar string. The parachute opens, but falling was so much better than this.

So far away. watching as it all rushes closer.

Between the bar and sleep there is the catapult of drug that teaches me. When to listen and when to write. In a tornado of tuxedos and gowns. Loud conversations laced with alcohol and wealth. When each drink costs at least an hour I learn to write faster. Stealing the moment from under their toasts. Quietly. At one end of the bar I wait for the music to retire. I watch as they petition the gods with cocktails and aftershave.

I couldn't say that anything happened there all that different from what ever has. I couldn't say they were really any different than me other than in appearance. But maybe that is what matters after all.

There's a reason all bars are dark. You don't want a good look at those faces. And you don't want anyone to see yours.

The further away I get the more I realize I've not gone anywhere.

They watch me as much as I watch them. A stalemate between curiosity and judgement. We sleep while the ocean moves us forward. We wake up. And cheat our way back to where we began. Wherever we've gone. Wherever we are.

It's the same.