You look different.

You look different without glasses.
Who are you trying to impress?
Without those thick plastic frames and smudged glass lenses,
your eyes seem so thoroughly naked.
I'm afraid to take too long of a glance,
lest I trespass into your mind.
I wish you would put them back on,
because I can't see you clearly without my own,
and I can't offer you myself the way you're being offered to me.

Regrets

Maybe when we kissed,
I opened my mouth too wide,
and a layer of my heart got trapped within your jaws.
Maybe when we spoke,
I forgot to coat my words in shadows,
and I unveiled my tongue's intentions too quickly.
Maybe when I'm with you,
I let my guard down,
and maybe I regret that.
Maybe next time,
I'll sew myself shut.

State of Mind

Sometimes,
I like to plug my ears
and close my eyes
and live inside my head.

Choke

I choke on my words.
They pool up in my mouth until I can't swallow them
and then they block my throat and I can't breathe.

I squirm and scream and struggle
but they continue to choke me
and they begin to pour from my mouth and wrap around my neck
and they form a rope, a noose
and tighten around my neck like a great snake.

I stop fighting.
I can't anymore because I'm weak against the power of suffocation
and my muscles relax
and my head stops spinning
and there's a sudden warmth over my body
and now I feel like maybe it was for the best
and then everything fades...

and all I see

is darkness.

Bitter Truths

When I was little, I tasted baker's chocolate.
I snatched it up greedily,
with stubby, sticky fingers
and devoured it whole,
before realizing, with a gag,
that it was nothing like the chocolate I had known before.
It was bitter, and dark,
without caramel or nougat
or peanuts or almonds
to weaken its sour flavor.
I had envisioned the sweetness
the sugar that would linger on my tongue...
I was met with a strong, ugly taste--
a hideous taste--
I couldn't swallow.
I couldn't bring it to my throat.
I chewed it quickly
(I had to finish)
I chewed it, my eyes squeezed shut,
my nose pinched between my pointer finger and thumb.
I gulped it down and flushed out my mouth,
with water, with milk, with soda, with juice, with a spoon of pure white sugar,
but the taste never left; it was there the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year
and the next year, and the next year, and the next--

And the next decade, and the next century,
until I was rotting beneath the ground
until the worms gnawed at my decaying flesh
until I dissolved into dust,
until the dust became earth,
and the Earth became nothing,
and I was nothing, too,
and I simply ceased to be.

But that's how we grow up.

Little Girls

Little girls, little girls, little girls
Have something to offer in the form of skirts and flavored lip balm
They don't quite understand but they follow the example
Of their high-heeled, lipsticked mothers.

Little girls get older and stop crying over scraped knees.
Instead crying over boys once they see that they possess
The ripe red fruit that is never meant for them
Daddies guard their precious treasures but daughters give out bite sized pieces
In the form of chaste kisses.

Teenage girls are the troublesome ones
They are a hot commodity and they know it
They are pretty and ripe and tantalizing
They're allowed to be gazed at and groped for and wanted
But never, ever to be picked
So they play the dangerous game of cat and mouse
Until they're finally captured.

Little girls don't stay little
They become women whose greatest possession
Exists folded neatly between their hairless legs.
They become mothers and wives
And keep on showing, but never telling
Because this isn't their game to play.

Cavities

You were a stranger with promises of caramelized affection
With a smile so sincere and a smooth, warm voice
I was a child with a sweet tooth

You were the Novocaine, numbing the ache
Of the last man to drill a hole in my heart
I was desperate for relief

You went down like a packet of Sweet'N Low
Saccharine, syrupy, pleasant, til that awful aftertaste
I was left with a bitter reminder of you on my tongue

You crumpled me up like an empty gum wrapper
Spat your experience on me 'cause you'd been chewing too long
I was thrown aside

Now you lure another girl in
How long will you go this time
before you start to make her rot?