Saturday Night 3 am
The girl beside me bobs her head in the toilet seat like a loose spring
The hand grabbing tufts of her hair brings her chin forward
Her eyes roll around in her head like disco balls on a spinning dance floor
She grips her fingers between mine and asks if I remember her name
We all wear the heat like the clothing our skin is lacking
Our cheeks like furnaces
Our lips like icicles beckoning to be frozen together
The girl in the toilet coughs
And perhaps you’ve already written her off as something she’s not
Like a mistake branded and bruised before its been reused
A cautionary tale spit from the bowels of her lips
Birthing flocks of lies we sew into some redemption ridden fairy tale end
We pretend
Pretend that it was never us
Pretend you never had your spine bent over backwards on the edge of a dance floor
Your heart guttered out through the gyration of your hips
Just you and some leftover casket of a man
And you’re screaming like profanity was your native tongue
And this strobe light was your path home
And all the other players in this game of life
Could not do this better than you can
Could not win the mystery of this prize you feel bubbling from your stomach
The promise in the humid heat of this song
Pretend
You never branded your fingerprint on sweating basement walls
Or the broken cushion of a bar stool
Have not scratched chips of your bones behind in every arm that grabs you
In every pelvis that layered itself behind you
Didn’t coat your eyes in excuses choking in smoke
Broke bread over cups as red as the blood avalanching through your veins
Attempting to keep your heart in tune with the pulse of this beat
That seizes you like a throat caught in a noose
Like a wrist bound between shackles imprisoned
Only this time you’ve swallowed the skeleton of the key
And hoped you would never get out
We are the generation of doubts
Of memories painted black as the power of our fists
As the dirt caking our feet
We beat rhythm into pain on drums of broken family trees
And left over promises
Of camera lens friends and lovers slipping between our sheets
Keep questions lingering at ends of bottles and kegs
Free fly our tongues like wishes from microphones to ear lobes
And every place that feels right in between
We are nocturnal goddesses
Naturally pink cheeked and sweated out curled haired
Who break watches and promises like they were wires to our cages
Who never asked for anything more than attention
And hushed judgments
And burn through gossip quicker than the paper thin patches of our souls
We are inhibitions grown too old
Trying to let the world breath in the tight pockets of our jeans
And racing circuits of our prose
My sister is in some incandescent cavern of a club
Drowning in the bubbling waves of her laughter
Smoking away the last rational word her lungs can expel
She fell
And is bobbing her head like a loose spring in the toilet seat
And I pray she can tell me she always wanted to do this
That it made her happy
Or that the aftertaste was at least just a little sweet
