you were nineteen;

then, you were fifteen —

making love to

your best friend's father,

crawling between your own bones,

and hiding from the truth:

that you are

finite and incomplete,

but that you can be broken.

(and that you loved the acid rain

like you never loved

the snow.)

electric blue,

whiter than the sun,

you burn like driftwood, salt

between your fingers;

just a blur of a girl

on an overexposed filmstrip.

you've folded your heart

into whispers;

you've wiped the gun clean.

and you still wear your mother

like a battle scar.

(yet you were more

than the slipstream ever was.)

you have always known

that there is a terrible romance

in sadness — a passion

like no other.

now you are sinking, sinking —

(white-blue sea glass

in a mason jar, curling

into smoke — your voice

dying like daylight

in your mouth.)

— you don't remember the past.