Python

ghost boy

slipped under my petal thin skin

rose and scratched his way

into the rafters, blood in everything

puke and spit and white lies.  
I did not know what looked back
from the silvered glass
for seven months, it was winter when I glanced again. 

I had grown pale and tall.  it is a new dusk, now,

but dark arms remain, hold me 

to the pre-war tile, again and again

I read the single dove bottle

Placed neatly on the bathtub ledge,

As bruises float

To the surface

Of my wet back. 

Can I take a breath

Monstrous enough

To eat the sorrow

And the disgust

Before it all unhinges its million jaws
And rises to strike?  How do I form words
Into the past; how do I choose which ones?  

Even now, I feel the pink lemonade

That you got me to drink against my lips,

The bonfire pressing warm night

Against my back somewhere in Fairfield

I’ve never returned to— 

Where Jim Murphy offered me purple kush

And I wore my best suede flats— 

They were green like my morning eyes— 

And you said you had taken Spinney’s girl for yours,

And shoved another cup of abrasive liquor 

Against my palm; it was baby-girl pink, and your teeth scraped

My shoulder bone where a strap of slim cotton lay.  

I opened my burnt eyes to a cornflower dawn two towns over,

My skirt bunched up over nothing, my favorite shoes

Forgotten in woodland.   

No one knew me then, I was a pageant child

Forgotten in the green room, clutching daddy's houndstooth coat, 

My mouth stuffed with compromises,

My hunger imperious and frenzied— 

I cut my knuckle open half on purpose

Against the grainy doorjamb to mark the morning and

Spilled cold merlot onto the transparent skin

Of my summer sheets, and along with it poured

Every self I had contained within me,

Every manic and every depressive,

Into the indigo bedroom where I lay,

My wheat-gold hair splaying out

In my pristine world,

In my newly empty body,

All remaining within 
The poison of your serpent tongue.