"Skins & Scales" | Teen Ink

"Skins & Scales"

January 14, 2012
By crux1 GOLD, Inez, Kentucky
crux1 GOLD, Inez, Kentucky
14 articles 4 photos 3 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Some feel the rain, others just get wet." -Bob Dylan.
"What kind of beast would turn it's life into words?" - Adrienne Rich


Maybe this is where I’ve found myself the last couple of years, sitting here with one half of a cigarette to my name, and no gas in my car. Empty wallet, empty hands.
You always find a way to wiggle free.
I was driving down the highway yesterday when I found myself wedged between two coal trucks on a curb. My heart began to race, and my hands sweat underneath the wheel. The thought from the start of this occurrence
crept
into my being. I found myself fantasizing about being swept up underneath each of them. How the car would crinkle, and wrinkle underneath their wheels. How they wouldn’t be able to tell if I were a man or woman undertook by these
two
great
steal beasts.
In the passing up of this opportunity the thought of you crept into my being. The image of an imaginary future kept me from listening to the devil on my shoulder. I drove through the opportunity. Unaffected, but affected. You sat with me the rest of the car ride there, and we talked of the future. The future we can never really talk about because of our situations. What mine is I am unsure, but lately it has come to me that I do have one. There is a situation keeping me from you. I have this lingering feeling that it’s my insanity, and my fear. Are those things great enough to be considered a situation? We wait for all things to be seen.
I find myself questioning all things, searching for truth.
I am a Truth seeker
I know the answers to all things asked, but ask anyways over top of my folded fingers. Kneeling at you I saw you sitting in the car with me, and unknowingly I tied up your hands, and
bound your feet with rope made of my fine hair. It dug deep into your wrists making permanent scars, eternal
braids. With red fists, and redder knees you sat astounded at how quickly one girl could move while sitting still. Entrapped with your claws deep in the seat of my s***** car, you wriggled like you do, and made a hole through the
entangled webs I’d strewn. Escaping
the escape artist, is an art all itself. When your knees were breaking into new legs you must have picked it up. A second language that can out talk you of human ability,
in staying still long enough to have the net put
overtop. As I picked you up from the fire, embers dropped along the way
fireworks an inch high.
You saw them too, falling to the floor the way lightening
shoots. You saw them in spite of your best effort to put closed hands with widened fingers overtop of your eyes full of
light. When your arms broke into new wings did you see the sky
too? A perspective that puts you above those of us crawling through the earth. Knowing the taste of the clouds is truly like cotton candy,
sugar sweet. A second language that can out talk the dirt from sitting behind your ear. Covered in the stuff, can you fly right out of it? When your knees were breaking into new legs did you remember how running feels with a
quickened heart?
Did you attempt it?
Remembering that you crawl on your legs
with the same two
that crawled on knees. I watched you feverishly bust out my windows, and cloak yourself with the sun. Still hearing your spaced breathing under ragged rope. Escaping the escape artist,
for once a page from my book,
your hands. In the game of throwing ropes we both sat, in a spiral out of control. With you melting over my tongue in thought, I pushed it through the
cracks of my teeth. We see the things we wanna see, and I could clear as day see you,
not wanting me to. You sat content watching me, but with eyes that hid
under the lids themselves. You can see me, while I can’t see you, only then or you
disappear. In the game of throwing ropes I remember never opening my
mouth.
You cannot know that I know…that you have thrown a rope around. And I should sit, as women are meant to be seen not heard. And I should smile,
as women do.
Making due when it’s due, and doing just that.

I want to make something’s clear, I wanna unthrow the stones that I’ve thrown causing a
ripple. There’s a second before a storm starts,
when you hear every starving leaf cry out, and that’s
you.
Holding my hunger captive in a canine snare, wringing my guts.
Walking down the stairs of a subway car crash, while wondering if you left the coffee pot on, before you locked up the house. Undermining my best attempts of dodging selfish wrists,
selfish hands,
selfish thoughts. Getting a letter in the mail, and rubbing your hands along it, over pen mark, and indent. Smelling the paper for the trace of a human soul behind the body with hands that wrote it. You taking my senses over, rewiring my brain,
rerouting control. Trading in sanity,
a jab.
I tell you things in words less satisfying than thought. I tell you things between the line
between lines,
knowing you know the steps to seek them out. Knowing that you are throwing things down there too. In-between the line
between lines I would say to you that I need you. I would let you know that this need is killing me slowly. In-between the line
between lines I’d say to you that I couldn’t say how sorry I am. That every lash you wanna cut in my flesh is an understandable bandage to the wound. That every second
you
spend on me is a blessing, and I should accept it as such, and believe just that. In the line
between lines I would tell you how I miss the way you smell, and the way you taste, and how your hugs feel when I’ve needed one more than life, and how I wish I knew more than just that. I would tell you I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
In the line between lines I would shout, ands stomp, and scream at the thought of the girl you’re wasting time on. I would cry out your name into
the night. I would let you know what you are doing, is all in spite of itself. And you would walk into my cage, in the line
between lines. In the line
between lines, you would come from nowhere, and ask me if I loved
you,
the way it’s come from nowhere so suddenly that you do question that more than an asking of questions game. You would stomp and cry out into
the night, at the thought of the answer being anything but

yes.

You would round me up, against the walls of lines, and take the answer right out of my own mouth into yours. You would taste it, and eat me whole. Against the walls
of lines. I would give you all of the answers, to anything you ever had the feeling to question. I would live with and for
you
for lifetimes outside of the mortal living life of a body. I would take my hands, and make
you
a meaning. I would make
you
a life. I would be your life, if living is something to hard for skinned knees to stand.
You
fall to pieces, and feel the scabs tearing at skin so freshly built.
You
deep down fall into the lines between the lines. I free fall a ways away landing by
you
in the pull of gravity. All of the stones I’ve thrown drowned golden in a leap of faith, all stones set aside, rippled
forever.
Maybe this is where I’ve found myself the last couple of years, on the verge of relaying time, and destruction for the sake of construction. Speaking for skin that’s been scared and torn, I handle
my new coat with hands made of
china. I handle my new coat with the intention of laying it in your hands
one day. Knowing that in the tearing of your own, you’ve felt a draft, and a
fear. I replace your skin that barely budged to the penetrations of blades and curses alike.
I lie upon your soul and bones, blanketing your vulnerability.
I warm your veins.
Where I’ve belonged this whole time.

Hold out your bare arms, and don’t mind the blood dripping onto my pant leg,
and the new carpet. Stink your legs in first undoing the permanent clasps
of temporary braces put in to hold you upright. Break in the space you can see by seeing it endless, and open. Take me onto
you,
and into your soul, handing over your name, to a new. Brace me back together with stiches and skin
you
see fit, just don’t color me the same. Digging new nails like stakes into earth, and grinning covered in the stuff.
Ropes of braided hair, and coarsely sewn tears, capturing me in mid-flight. Finally with the artist of escape, a cut and
run.
I’ll make it. We’ll make it.



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