she sits cross legged on the hotel bed
in the middle of a room for two.
she hasn't smiled for months;
her friends say she has forgotten
just how to.
it's unexpected, how difficult it is
to relearn something so
instinctive.
pull your lips back,
tilt your head,
bare your teeth.
(to a cruel world,
why should she?)
from the back-blue world outside her windowsill,
from the lies that her parents told her
that
the sky will always be baby blue,
like your eyes,
from what little light remains
you can see the rusted scissors in her left hand
and the jagged lines of wet, wavy hair
that fall into the creases of her lap
and catch on the ribbed indents
of her body.
she breathes in.
the shower is still running.
on the fogged glass,
as a dying testament
to the promise she made to her therapist
about self improvement,
(fake it 'till you make it,)
reads in her shaky handwriting
'i am okay.'
it still disappears, slowly.
whatever happened to being in the centre of the universe
and stopping the moon
and the stars
when she breathed in?
whatever happened to stopping the running of the world-
the mothers crying,
the people dying,
- so somebody could come save her first?
whatever happened to the superhero stories
her parents read her?
to their arms and warm embrace?
to her friends,
a shoulder to cry on?
whatever happened
to the promises made at childhood,
that you'll never be alone
because you'll have at least the moon
following you,
right by your side,
ready to catch you if you fall?
she cries, shoulders heaving.
there are dots in her eyes
that follow her around
until she thinks that they are cracks in her world
and that, behind all this life,
there are rainbows.
an escape.
what's the harm
in a little running away?
she turns on the bedroom light
because that’s what her mother would do.
she is trying to help herself.
under a yellow electric light
spilling static into the air,
her scissors glint.
and so she falls in love
that night
with tracing thin white lines,
with ruining
and saving
herself.