Painting Over Splintered Skin
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
Gnawing knocks meet the door, centuries locked and forgotten,
even tip toes will wake the songs of sins secretly tucked behind the frame.
The sounds drift in and out with a silent sort of scream
until those mistakable hums become all you can speak.
Last resort to save grace, forget the semblance of perfection you have painted on the ceiling
and crawl back to the door dusted in untouched aches gone unmedicated.
Seconds seamlessly shift to hours, and I think it is okay to try the rusted key,
only now, begin to play with the mutated pain.
Soft-dolled skin is nothing without the warm blood running rampant underneath,
seeping deliciously like the juices from the wounds of candy apple blood stains.
An oeuvre of frescos articulated by my finest impressions only the blind will see,
parts of this glow-in-the-dark puzzle converted and sold to secrecy.
As the neon grows harsher it isolates and electrocutes, even the pieces praised.
Cannot marry the cherry-lipped daughter without hauntings of the father
fled so far from the grave, dying daylight discerns, nowhere left to go but away.
As a perfected version, a vision of you only draped in the most velvet of wine,
having made it through the maze of heat lightning you are fighting through now.
It has been whispered in my ear and pierced in my mind a million different times,
but untaken advice only takes when the heaviest chains make it past the finish line.
Hear it now from dusty lips and again from records pieced together by the stained glass you swore you sold.
Mornings are not for pipedreams, midnights do not strike for romance alone.
On any given afternoon when the residue of sickness washes over,
a fiery fresh fault, fairly familiar and teetering on déjà vu will make a home in you.
She will search your dimpled skin for natural reflexes that would end her in an instant.
In this hour you will try to relearn sifting and riddling through the anecdotes,
phrases embroidered on the back of vintage jeans, no more noes only “yes”
Pressured to wear your heart on your sleeve, but only when in one piece.
Don’t let the ill fear the disease, how do you know which prescriptions to decrease?
Why give in and leave another bite, when the frost will come again
To thaw her when the moments right?
Erasing discolored bruises always fails to erase the textured pain,
when nightmares are resurrected, the visions never stand straight.
Instead dancing on promises of “one day,” of a second, a third chance.
Unwounded ballerinas stand so stiff, that they never dance as planned.
Why not fight?
Fight to the death and inhale her breath as your own,
soak in the vows you have been forced to swallow as unknown
and lay your sumptuous signature down on the unsweetened dotted line.
Now, never to reach for the brush used to paint over splintered time.
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
Strike Out,
Writer: Jacqueline Galvano
Editor: Blake N. Fiadino
Tallahassee