Drabble #46 – Singing songs (just to
sing the songs)
I’d never realized how reliant on my alarm clock I had
become until I didn’t have it. It unnerved me more than
it should have, knowing that I would just wake up at
any time. What if I slept more than I needed to? What if I
slept forever? What if I never woke up? I don’t know what
my parents would do. Maybe they would regret borrowing my alarm
clock for the night. Maybe they would regret not borrowing it
sooner. They’d never say that out loud but it would
linger on their breaths, a sin mouthwash couldn’t cleanse
the lie out of.
Drabble #45 – Purple stars (they're
in your eyes).
You sigh like a receding tide, all smooth seas and soft waves.
But your touch is that of a traffic-clogged highway, quick and
bustling, sweeping through your body and then settling out. I
could fire shots into the sky for you until I run out of
bullets or I get tired, but I would still be left with the gun.
It’s the price of recklessness. I could love you hard
enough for it to leave marks on your bones, hard enough for you
to walk away, but I would still be left with my hands. These
palms have already memorized the feel of your touch, and I
don’t want them to forget it.
Drabble #42 – Dragon
Close your eyes and I’ll
give you this story:
Stick your hand into your chest and pull out your heart. See if it matches the color of your cheeks. There are two monsters in your gut, and one of them does not belong to you. Everything casts a shadow; remember this even though you told me in a dream you aren’t afraid of anything. We’ll cut into those who leave you jaded, you poor little thing. Recklessness is considered beautiful for a reason, so no, I will not hold back.
Drabble #43 – Fingers drumming down
your skin (shaking up your heart)
Hey, your heart has its eyes closed. Should I make a ruckus? I
bet you want someone on the straight path to success but
I’ll be crooked. Tortured me poised, I’ll show you
your crimes, I’ll mix you up. Push me hard into the
sunset; you’ll only burn and I’ll glitter across
the horizon. But why are you being distant? You’re a bit
blue these days. Come, tie your shoelaces and run with me. How
does it feel to live for yourself? The diamonds shaking across
your skin, they’re free to shimmer through your hair and
trace the patterns plotted on your skin.
Drabble #41 – Sleeping
Pill
It’s 4am, and a voice is
murmuring against my ear like sin, like sleeping pills. I do
not say anything, because you’re picking at the threads
of another conversation I don’t want to have, but we
don’t mention that. You’re so afraid of silence,
afraid of the thoughts that lurk there and the off-chance that
I might get the courage to say them. “Go to
sleep,” you whisper, a smile ghosting around your
lips, as if were that simple. Can’t, I almost
whisper back, you’re all I see when I close my
eyes. Almost.
“Scared of the dark?”
Something like that.
Drabble #40 – Where the asphalt flowers
grow.
You live in the cracks of rock on spray-painted concrete in
Hong Kong. You live in the bikes and cars riding in the early
morning rush hour of New York City. You live in the gold
flecked domes on top of painted beauty in the churches of
Moscow. You live in the purple tulips blooming in the shade of
the Eiffel Tower. You are a fleeting whisper of something
special in my 3am thoughts. You are here, and now. You are
everywhere. You are the world, my world. That’s where you
live. You are the cuts of inspiration I get in the spaces
between seconds. You live in those spaces.
Drabble #38 – Whirlpool
Smother the bird of my heart and make a wreath of the feathers.
Hang it from your door. Let me at least be a trophy in your
cabinet. I’ll bleed into the walls; into the plaster so
that I’m all you see in the corner of your eye. I taped
needles to my skin in hopes that you would understand how I
felt when you touched me. Notice the pearls around my neck,
each a sliver of happiness, painstakingly strung one by one.
You’ve pressed the fragments of these into my palms, ran
them over with alcohol to sterilize the feelings out of them.
Maybe they’ll fade, or disintegrate. I’ll never
know if they do.
Drabble #36 – What worlds she did not
break.
Hearken this grove of secrets pulled by the tide, the shore
grasps to keep. I’ve glimpsed the shadow of doubt across
your face so here, take these words I couldn’t form so
they decayed on my tongue and inlayed them gravestones, but we
call them teeth. Here, listen to the ripple of my heart being
pulled out to sea. Here, listen to the ocean; it will translate
my soul better than I. Here, pluck these heartstrings, make a
melody of my love and remember it. I coveted the shore and its
inability to stop loving the tide, reminiscent of cold hands on
my ribs. We swish salt water in our mouths to heal the cuts,
don’t you see? It’s love, dissolved in a glass,
magical, healing.
Drabble #34 – The cracked edge of
something once seamless.
Sometimes I tell myself that the furniture is more than
furniture. When you left, all I had was the acid green futon, a
cracked wooden coffee table, and cold sheets. I still recall
the day we went to IKEA and picked up the new family members,
on sale and ugly as can be. Sometimes I talk to my furniture,
and sometimes it talks back, but only sometimes. Most of the
time there’s nothing else I can do, but teeter on the
edge between detached apathy and infatuation. Sometimes, I feel
nothing. Other times… I can feel the world breathing
against the soles of my feet.
Drabble #35 – Flavors
Swallow the universe and you’ll be picking stars out of
your teeth. Put the bottle down and leave the dregs of planets
and speckled backwash for me. I’ll smoke those infinities
from your lungs, if you let me. I swear I will, for all the
gold encrusted and diamond studded promises I offer, this one
comes laced in stardust. This dusty shelf holds a more cracked
you. This rusty faucet knows the color of your teeth too well.
This frozen mountain that we’re dancing on is a slippery
slope indeed, but you’re so beautiful when nebulae are
swirling in our drinks and painting the surface of your
eyes.