We’re Going To Die

I wear gold rings that wrap tight and strangle my fingers until the tips go numb.  I wear bronze doves that hook through tiny holes in my ears and dangle down to my shoulders.  I can hear them cooing their metallic bird calls when I turn my head.  I can hear the bones in my neck crack, too.  There’s a burnt wood emblem that hangs down over my breasts from a string.  My hair is pulled away from my face.  My lashes are stiff with tar.  My bra is padded and wired and when I remove it tonight there will be pink half-moons just above my ribs from the weight and the pull of it.  My shirt shows every dip and every rise of my waist and belly.

I don’t paint my fingernails but that’s okay because nothing is real. 

The fog on the window isn’t real when I press myself against it.  The cold of Winter isn’t real.  Your voice and my tongue aren’t real.  We are born just to die and we spend some money in the meantime and we ship flowers to  people we love in the meantime.  We cry over the things that aren’t real.  In the meantime. 

I think my ass looks better when I’m wearing heels.  I wear pastel pinks on my cheeks and I’m too pale to get away with it.  Or so they say.  But it doesn’t matter.  I won’t matter.  I used to get real drunk and I’d vomit in alleys and then smoke a cigarette to disguise my breath before I ordered a double.  That doesn’t matter.  I’d leave big, big tips because the bartender hemmed her skirt without following the two finger rule.  I like it.  She has nice legs and her thighs are bare.  It doesn’t matter.  It isn’t real. 

I feel stupid after I cry but so elated while I’m doing it. 

Imagine how it was before we were born.  It will be that way again before we know it.  Imagine how there was nothing.  Imagine the nothing and try to justify your claustrophobia. 

I shaved my legs last night and they smell like jasmine now.  But in the end, that doesn’t matter.