There was a girl inside of me who faced backwards when no one else was around.  She had the ability to tie back her own lovely locks, but strained her heart in breathing. 

“This is going to kill me,” I told her, and she went on dreaming.  She said she had to, that she had no movie-star face.

I drifted downward. Away-ward.

“Come back,” she said, “though I know you never need a place to live.”

She woke up falling, visions of a prolonged wish all around.  He grabbed for her ankles; his hands sliding, her bones splitting.  His dreadful little nails dragged along her skin, removing thin layers and keeping them.  He could not catch her.  He held onto her toes for days until they disconnected and she dreamed of meeting his ghost on the edge of the world.  There were no others and he talked to her of the most lovely little lies, and she realized for the first time she had never seen his face. 

“Goodness,” she sighs, “I didn’t think you would come back. I didn’t think you would make it on time.” 

Laughter came easy to him, straining her heart, and she found their cliff-like surroundings to be a lush complexion of colors, not the black and white imagined.  She reached for the tie that hung perfectly around his throat and pulled it tight until his fingers were numb.  

And, she found herself discovering a great journey [“thank you greatly,” she says kindly] to find what he left behind from a war in a world in a cave.

 Soon, she will no longer be free.  He believes her to be always, but she knows better. 

He had wanted to know where her silly little heart wandered at night, “I followed that wide road in between trees, after the moon; chasing down its hopeless memories,” she told him.  “And, further down, when I looked to my left there were arrows of light sweeping the sky, illuminating only half of a lonely field tree.”  Lying on her back in stiff sheets, she lifted her bare leg to press against his bedroom wall, its temperature cool on her pale skin.

     “Did you find the memory you were looking for?” he asked at her side, admiring the way his shadow played to form to her body.

     “No,” she tells him.  “I think it may be lost.”  And he noticed how she didn’t seem to really mind.  He loved when she pretended not to be bothered.  

     “You have the eyes of a genius,” he tells her, “you are always my hero.”

But he wouldn’t always understand her heart.  And soon, she will find herself lost upon looking for an ancient setting; she is no longer a freed girl.  “You are not my hero,” she will want to say, but it will be too late.  As usual, she is too late.

["You," he said, "are the earthquake in my mind."]

 The walls had come crashing down at the sound of familiar laughter.  I stepped out into the middle of a night and heard my own movements echo across empty streets.  He had come to me with blood on his fingers and a whisper in his throat. I wanted desperately to tear open his jaw and climb inside, to unravel his delicious secret.  But his lips were sealed and possessed a grave history of lying for his own benefit.

So I asked, “Why, boy, did you make the walls around me crumble?”  And I bent to brush dust from my ankles.

He wanted to respond, to speak of hundreds of stories.  But instead he touched his blood on his palm to my cheek and told me he had been dying to set me free.

[I would hope to distract her.]

   There was a girl inside of me who faced backwards when no one else was around.  She had the ability to tie back her own lovely locks, but strained her heart in breathing. 

“This is going to kill me,” I told her, and she went on dreaming.  She said she had to, that she had no movie-star face.

I drifted downward. Away-ward.

“Come back,” she said, “though I know you never need a place to live.”

She woke up falling, visions of a prolonged wish all around.  He grabbed for her ankles; his hands sliding, her bones splitting.  His dreadful little nails dragged along her skin, removing thin layers and keeping them.  He could not catch her.  He held onto her toes for days until they disconnected and she dreamed of meeting his ghost on the edge of the world.  There were no others and he talked to her of the most lovely little lies, and she realized for the first time she had never seen his face. 

“Goodness,” she sighs, “I didn’t think you would come back. I didn’t think you would make it on time.”  Laughter came easy to him, straining her heart, and she found their cliff-like surroundings to be a lush complexion of colors, not the black and white imagined.  She reached for the tie that hung perfectly around his throat and pulled it tight until his fingers were numb.  And she found herself discovering a great journey [“thank you greatly,” she says kindly] to find what he left behind from a war in a world in a cave.

[you are not my hero.]

     He was supposed to be what saved them, but his own father missed his birth.  

     “Don’t take this from me,” he whispered at her side, as public as possible.  And she was unaware what kind of response was clever enough.  He leaned onto her with damp skin and she told him she was, of course, innocent.

     “But you never even got to say goodbye.”  He pleaded with her among hundreds of others and she couldn’t cry.  “You never said goodbye.”  There were three years in between then and now and she wished she never knew. And now, now she wants to take pictures. 

Hundreds.

Of.

Him.

     “I want to take your picture,” she tells him, and begins to almost cry. 

     Her eyes are closed but she can still see the shadows of florescent lighting.  “I want to take your picture” she whispers and counts the radiant colors framing his hair.  There were many notes then, reflecting off her body and she ached.

     She was soaking wet all over when their figures collided, gripped, reached for any life left lingering. And now, he says he has been wondering.  Wondering, wondering, wondering. Except tonight.

     And it’s when he talks that she remembers his confessions of flying horses.  And no, no other could ever love like he does.

     There were no worthy dedications that night, but still she leaves unable to hear him, ankles bloody.

     She had driven this way so many times before, always exhilarated.  Always in the middle of the night. 

     It was memorized, burned into her brain.  She would never be able to forget the way headlights in the dark would twist around bends in the road, the way her stomach ached when she sped uphill.  The way she was followed her into her dreams where she crashed a hundred times around that silly fence post turn.

[never let me forget about you.]