Original Poetry

leave wrong enough alone

she is picture-perfect porcelain, as long as you admire from a distance

her lovely bones, bleached, brittle, sure to shatter should she fall again

"just a hairline fracture"

how many times has she heard that one before?

the breaks weave themselves into a spiderweb of biting words

which can be brushed aside or pulled apart but never truly forgotten.

when she spins, she laughs in the face of vertigo

satin shoes let her reach high, higher than she knew she could

and there is not blood but energy and music humming in her veins

what is oxygen?

but she pirouttes on, en pointe, as whole as she knows how to be

for now.

color bleeds into her cheeks, red and pink pooling just below the surface

and oh, how i hope to God it stays under that ivory skin

and oh, what would i give to keep the red from sliding through the white

dripping onto the sheets and not quite mixing with the ocean being cried

as she falls, her ornament's thread snapping from the false green

i want to catch her even if she's already gone and slicing my fingertips

as a scolding for getting in her way

all i want is to wrap my arms around that skinny skinny waist with the small ribcage

and to not let go until her wails fade to sobs fade to hiccups

she worries me sick

as if she was in danger of falling, shards clinking on a wooden floor, the moment i turn my back

and i tell her so

and now the wrong person is apologizing

all i can do is picture her curled under blankets and the weight of the world

smothered cries clawing themselves past her lips

wanting me

but i am not here and that makes it a thousand times worse

my thoughts were ruled by the idea of getting out of that godforsaken town

where there was no room to move or breathe or scream

i swallowed the pain of the wounds i sustained, a horsepill, for later, much later

but something broke her, the glass ballerina

and swept what was her body into the corner because it couldn't see her worth

as if she had asked to be made of cold unyielding unfeeling glass

and it has since occurred to me that in leaving her i have ceased to ever be enough again