The life ring

My hand clutched a memory of a lonely night like it was a life ring, something to keep my writing afloat,

the stars peeked from between my fingers and the moon nestled deep unto my palm.

It was bittersweet, this memory that I clutched, I let the stars peek through the cracks in

my loose grip and the moon started humming a song I cried to it long before the night morphed

into a memory.

Morphed into a feeling morphed into a hurt morphed into the goodbye I never got to say morphed into the i miss yous you will never hear morphed into a memory I clutched in my hand morphed into a life ring morped into a reminder that every night could just as easily fit into my hand morphed into my lonliness taking up just enough space at the nib of my pen morphed into me letting it drip unto the paper morphed into my clutch loosening around the moon to shine a little light on the words I didn't know I kept inside until they morhed their way on the paper I took out the night I sat to write.

My hands clutched a memory of a lonely night like it was a life ring, something to keep my writing from drowning, something to keep the words just on the surface, never too deep, too steep, metaphors in a heap letting the synonymous leap from the tip of my tongue into promises the paper never let me keep.

I sit in the dark and write of a view, the stars peek through the cracks and fall for you and the moon wakes up to illuminate the flaws I didn't see in your smile but I see in a aisle of stacked up insecurities of my mismatched pile of why I will never capture the way the lonely night makes you look like a story worth telling but my writing

not so

worthwile.

My hand clutched a memory of a lonely night like it was a life ring, the same hand clutched a pen like it was the ocean,

I am drowning and floating and dying and jotting and floating and plotting,

won't you tell me how to let go of the memory I keep on quoting

in the hopes the ink from my pen drowns me into finally resorting to let sinking teach me inking the drafts I penciled overthinking

overthinking about how my words were forever shrinking and my truths won't fit inside the ringing of the lies I am stringing convinced my mouth is bringing the brightest rhymes I recite without blinking to make sure you know how close I am inching to breaking apart at my hinges to tell a story that never lived inside me but my heart twinges too hard not to tell,

I see a bird soaring through the morning sky and I write it as everything but a bird soaring through the morning sky.

My hand clutches a memory of a lonely night like it is a life ring. The stars peek through the fingers, the moon burrows deep into the palm and a bird soars through the calm.

A plot twist I will never read

Somehwere an hourglass tips and falls and breaks and time stops still for more than a second.

I wish I am there but I am not.

'

I crack the hourglass under my fingers until the glass cuts through me and the hour cuts through me and I sit wonderig if the blood trickling down my arm is darker because I am screwed over with time itself or because I screwed over with time itself.

It's an unanswered question, one I keep asking the plot twist that was written in some book that I never got to read where the pretty girl was a human and not a set of shy smiles and teeth bared preventing you from seeing underneath.

There is a plot twist I haven't read yet, where people wonder why her smile is the brightest thing ever

and in that story someone actually asks her about it

instead of being blinded

into thinking she has no wit instead of asuming she is just a face with no grit. Backstage she would spit words so cruel they split open the book right where all these unread plot twists should hit, but she answers calmly.

I don't know what she answers, I haven't read that book yet,

but for me, thirteen birthdays are enough to have a suction tube up my mouth and a hand up my thigh and my teeth are scared shitless to ever get cavities again.

Maybe that was her answer as well.. I don't know I haven't read that book yet, the one with the plot twist where the pretty girl is human more than a set of shy smiles and the brightest teeth.

There is a book where the plot twist works in the favor of the pretty girl, the book I haven't read yet but her character is more than flawless skin. She looks in the mirror and imagines her collarbones as wings to the bird sleeping at the base of her throat ready to set her to flight and her skin does not hold her down.

In another book, the ones I've read, Someone somewhere convinces her to rip the skin apart

to let the bird take flight

but she looks down and sees nothing but teeth marks and fingerprints

burning holes in the flesh making it stick more to the wannabe wings

and she is left gasping for air

but the wings are no longer there.

They never were.