bloody nose lottery

my fingers
shivering red.

-

i have my head bowed when i first feel it.
heat comes riverlike and quick
streaming down skin, pooling in the corner of a mouth that opens and closes on rusty hinges,
and then a perfect drop falls, bullet hole on the floor.
tastes like pressure. diamond-hard pressure, warmed by my confusion, heated by my anger, pushing through me like recycled memory that i've been waiting to release.

and now there's a girl in the steamed up mirror, hands reaching up for her face,
looking down at my blood on the linoleum.

"it feels familiar. you know?"
those eyes are like still water, and i get so distracted looking at myself the way they see me
that i've completely forgotten he's standing there.
"but in a week, i won't know them."
and the smile.
the flash.
a photograph taken by my hungry mind.

scorpion girl, i'm lost without you. so i fly across the deserts, capped by mountains unaffected, crossed by rivers that died so long ago nobody exists who remembers them or lives to regret how the crust swallows every good thing.
and on the horizon, the steam of the engine rises up
los angeles belching,
vomiting a beautiful shadow to cover the sun so the demons can walk.
los angeles...city in my dreams. city in all of our dreams. you possess us all and hold the strings to bones long gone, and inside you, i think in color for the first time.

it's just a matter of time.

scorpion girl, tell me what to think.
tell me how to move and run, tell me how to walk in shadows without tripping.
tell me - who's hand do i hold?
what knife do i trust?
we answer to the one God; we answer to a heavenly burden, chained heavy and golden around our throats. but sometimes i think the psychopaths can smell me coming.
i think they can smell the stench of my blood.
i think it haunts them like they haunt me.

the fire follows the blessed, and even now, with my cold hands tucked over my throat to cool the blood rising, i know that it's just a matter of time.
bloody nose lottery...
we'll win it eventually.
the chance to release our skin and our vitality, to shed the coil like a snake on the bathroom floor, to rise in a glorified form like a thousand eyes that angels can't bear to look at. even now, i itch at my skin...thinking about the day it's going to come off.

the girl in the mirror stares at me unflinching, ocean-deep eyes rimmed with weariness
but i can't talk to her with blood between my teeth
on my hands
on the floor.

you want to know why i left?

she shifts to the left, reaching for paper towel, unable to look away from the river coming down around my mouth.

i didn't leave because you were impossible or disturbed... deathly or imperfect. 
we're all tortured; we're all shells of bodies we used to be.
no, i left because the sight of my blood
from the holes you put in me
broke your heart so.
and every time you stabbed me in the back, you wept with our disjointed sorrow, screamed with our shared anguish, and being cylindrical, i knew you'd never be able to pull enough blood from me
to ease your conscience.
how could i call myself brave
and let you go on living like that?

tell yourself whatever you need to be able to sleep.
(but i know the truth keeps you up at night.)

scorpion girl -
i miss your uncertainty.
maybe if i second-guessed a few more things, i would be able to breathe better, rest here a little longer...but everything just seems sure to me. even through lying teeth, i'm not sure i can shake the air that i believe.
believe.
believe.
in what i'm waiting for.

i love you.
i will never stop loving you, or the way your world holds me to it's chest like it does. i love the hiss of tires on the 5, the glow of light through a haze of dreams and memory - the crunch of feet on pavement, the face at the top of the stairs - the catch in her laughter and the whispering closeness in the way he says my name - the heat of the sun and the smell of the world - the confusion and intimacy of being alive.
i love the girl in the mirror, hardened and passionate beneath a stream of apathy,
who finally, with a smile creeping through bloody teeth,
has put the tissue to her nose

and stopped the bleeding.

x