Push and Pull

To you, I whispered my name

and you rearranged the sounds.

Scribbled through the syllables,

and retold the beginning, middle, and end.

You erased it,

one letter at a time.

Soon I opened my mouth and old phrases didn’t taste the same.

The unwonted words fell with a skyscraper of weight –

all

the

way.

Suddenly every sound shrank to a solitary squeak.

To fight to breathe was to wage a war.

To you, I lost the battles, straight-faced.

From time to time, some other voice would speak for me

as the mornings started shocking me, propping me awake.

Reflecting ghostly in the mirror, I knew the needle did some undoing.

The thread between my lips was webbing, it was getting harder to lie.

All the while, I stopped remembering what I was gasping for.

But in the darkest hours of the night, I dulled the needle out of spite.

Named a crazed youth downing bottles of dares, I’ve lost all reason to care.

You see, I looked in the mirror to find my lips set free,

painted in dark red, dusted in ecstasy.

From the music to the absence of bulging eyes and broken bones,

I danced in a ring of fire, and I never danced alone.

And dropped in the center of the attention,

I’m selfishly selfless, I know,

I’m ravishing and glistening and out of your control.

I’m a betrayer to the best, to the worst I’m all yours.

The world’s a movie missing your silencing collapse.

Under the stars, locked in the night, waltzing on tracks of a train,

fulfilling expectations, succumbing to insane.

Underneath his voice, I’ve forgotten who’s to blame.

Smiling and weeping,

I whispered my name.

Strike Out,

Writer: Jacqueline Galvano

Editor: Dani Hernandez

Tallahassee