nevermind + poetry.

a letter to savannah.

And when your mother

Smelled the rotten promiscuity on you

Even after you sprayed

A whole bottle of cheap perfume

And scrubbed your skin for hours.

What did you do?

Smile and laugh, and tell her everything's okay.

Surely feeble fragrances will give you back

Your pure, virginal scent.

Savannah, there were nights

When the stars wanted to be you.

Those boys, they stain your sheets with bad choices.

They make you like your name only after they whisper it

In their drunken sleep.

Savannah, there is no perfume you can spray, no vanilla you can swallow

That will make you smell chaste.

You are long past the point of appearing pure,

Even if you really are.

You are long past the point of appearing innocent,

Because everyone has decided

That you never really were.

Even your mother, as she held you in her arms

Had decided what you would become.

What you had to become.

The doctor had to avert his eyes, savannah,

You were a sin waiting to happen.

Dear savannah,

The first time you ever

Held a boy in your bed,

He wrapped his fingers around your throat

Like he had seen his father do

When he got impatient,

And he told you to sing.

Your voice painted him in sweat, greed, hunger -

His fingers turned your neck sickly white,

Even though you sang in colors.

The boy taught you exactly

What your mouth was good for.

He wrapped his fist around your hair, jerked you back

Your throat a porcelain staircase.

He kissed the bones jutting from your skin,

And pushed his mouth onto yours.

Savannah, his tongue was soaked in you.

I think you taste yourself on his lips, and he tastes himself on your tongue.

And everytime he says your name, he smiles,

Savannah,

You were tarnished silver.

Your name was thrown across bedrooms

Like a broken promise,

Written in bruises across ivory backs,

You were a tantalizing set of last words.

Your mother apologized

To the people who'd seen you smile

Who'd heard you sing.

She begged you to ask the world

For forgiveness.

You'd always thought of your mother

As a wilting flower. Your favorite kind.

Savannah,

What did you think of yourself as?

Did you know that some nights

The stars wanted to be you?

The boys left your sheets reeking

Of bad decisions, cigarettes, rotten fruits-

Undeniable mistakes.

The blinks of your pretty eyes

Were thunderclaps, your smile

Was a flash of brilliant lightning.

All the people you came across

Could not resist observing the storm

Or having a taste of the winds.

And what do you do, savannah?

What could you have done?

The day you begin to say no,

The day you wash the scent

Of bad choices

And undeniable mistakes

Out of your sheets,

The day you no longer hear

The jangling of gold rings

On metal chains,

The day you stop running,

At one hundred miles per hour,

The day you are nothing but happy-

The world will give up spinning.

And i won't worry so much.

Dear savannah,

Some nights,

The stars wanted

To be you.