Your scales

Your eyes

Ivory and ice

A contrasted; glaring; parroted; parody of mine

Black and white

We are the piano keys of the jungle

One can't exist without the other

We couldn't sound more alike if we tried

I had never seen myself clothed in someone else's skin

They see me, they fear me more

Slithering in the shadows

Black mamba, even darker eyes, soul to match

Shut; lock; bar the front door

I'm cold-blooded, like you said

All I wanted was someplace warm

We do our dance with a mouse between us

It has teeth like razor blades

Mind like a steel trap

Tongue made of silver

Guns made of words

Heart made of money

It watches me.

It waits for me to leave the shadows

It never looks at you

Why would it think it has to?

Even if it did

Its eyes made of someone else's lens

Would be so blinded

By the light your paper lizard skin reflects

That mouse wouldn't even see your jaw unhinge

#equality #toughstuff #america #everyday #handsupdontshoot #freeformprose

You’ve got darkness. It curls around you like a shadow and drapes itself across your shoulders, pulling the corners of your ever-smiling, laughing mouth down. You keep it quiet, on a leash - I don't think anyone else would see it, especially since no one seems to look. But I watch it when you play with the pocket knife you keep in your locker, the one you say calms you down; I hear it when you joke about your miseries being unleashed on the world; I feel it when your fingers tick-tick-tick on the side of a box every time you’re forced to stand still on a particularly rough Monday. I'm almost jealous of how present it is for you, how well it seems to know you, how intimately you keep it in your back pocket. I wish I knew its name and where it came from. I want it to come greet me and tell me all about itself, and after that crawl into my purse to live so you can be as bright all the time as you become now when it gets distracted. I would take it for you, if that were an appropriate thing for me to do.

Since it's not, I hope She is able to help hold it at bay for you. I can see your arms shaking sometimes.

#freeformprose #knowingsomeone #shadows #comfort

I love watching you drive away. The window on the side where I always park warps your face a bit, like maybe you’re a different You. And by different, I do of course mean exactly the same, just without Her. I’m better at talking to your brake lights than I’ve ever been at telling you anything important. Sometimes, when your car starts and you’re still picking a radio station, I think about throwing open my door and pounding on your window; you’ll roll it down and push up your dorky transition lens sunglasses and ask me what’s wrong, and I’ll finally tell you that I can feel you in every single heart beat I’ve had since the day I saw you. I’ll finally tell you that I’ve never had blood the color of someone else’s eyes pump through my veins before, and that that feels important. In this fantasy, you’ll turn the radio up and yell at me to get in, and we’ll drive off into a sunset unfettered by the ever-increasing smog that seems to envelop our town these days.

In that reality, you would get a restraining order, and the smog is still there.

In actual reality, I just stare at your car five days a week and wish I had met you a long time ago.

#mildhumor #unrequitedlove #freeformprose #imagine #smog