Vinegar and Brown Paper
nursing invisible bruises, inflicted by words used like heavy hammers, pounding away at the core, printing their story for a trapped and desperate audience of one.
bandaging invisible scratches, deep and painful, grooves cut sideways through the music, against the rhythm of a life. sharp-nailed words and thoughts, expectations that can never be met, an oyster with no pearl.
sewing up invisible slashes, some shallow and weeping blood tears, some deep and gaping, deepest thought and belief open to the eye, ravaged and torn. how can they know, those who strike, the perfect spot to place the knife?
how do they know how to hurt, how to bruise, how to scratch, how to slice…how, finally, to kill? and how can they, and feel nothing themselves??
Part-time
a stranger lives within my skin,
I feel her struggles, hear her pain,
my family call her “joey’s sin”,
and fear that I have gone insane.
I’m not sure I don’t agree,
to want to live another’s life?
surely this cannot be me,
is it worth this pain and strife?
yet when I find her, deep inside,
and coax her out to live again,
the joy and peace I cannot hide
release me from the world of men.
she soothes my spirit, scraped and raw
by expectations that never fit,
the self-esteem they never saw
comes back to me slowly, bit by bit.
pretty clothes and silky hair,
smokey eyes and graceful walk,
I spark, and they can see it there,
the boys who come to pet and talk.
if they knew, if they could see,
they’d be repulsed, they’d run away,
and so I hide me carefully,
a girl by night…a boy by day.
kyotzeta 