forelock

Tracing hair-webs on PVC walls, catching uneasy sighs and moans—the sugar under my nails. Soap has made my body filmy and fleetingly pearlescent. My skin is uncomfortably taut like borrowed clothes, and ruddy as a young rose bud—only sleeping, just shy of a quivering touch. I'll appoint my teeth as thorns, and my nails too, if tapered on bedrock, femur, a nail file—if it's hers. Yet, my lodgings are quilted, cottony. I sink into my surroundings, never having been so held. God is the pillow in which I lay my head: feathered, a standard rectangle. God is the room I cannot leave: antiseptic and musky. My mother's vanity is whole, my fickle child-self never saw it shattered, but there is no oval mirror, only clear glass. To adopt the role of a mirror you shouldn't wonder who is looking, or who you have become.

For hours my hair sits indomitably wet, and the humid air encases me in tears.