We're the yesterday girls—devouring the liquor-washed sun.
Our lungs swell in the putrid smoke
of crushed cigars on the dark edges.
They breathe the thick air, curling
in them—a stretched afterthought of epiphany.
The tendrils of bitter smoke eat us away;
We're tired of walking and stumbling into the thorny
bushes of blue flesh and crumbling sins—
and arising with bloodshot eyes and bleeding limbs.
The cigarette burns in the blue light; blood bubbles out of our mouths.
Our broken nails claw the beige walls around us, plaguing our
minds in thoughts dark as the rising sky.
The chemicals lace our bodies; we congregate in a blue carnival
of blasphemous psalms, wishing to hear noises behind the beige walls.
Yet, we crawl around broken glasses and dead cigarettes,
thrashing ourselves in toxic desires.
This asphalt silence burns us away.
Life wasn't meant to be like this—
dissipating in the corner of a room, dumped
in cobwebs and mold-stained dresses.
This weary afterthought and overstretched silence
are too much to bear holding onto the rusted hooks
in our plagued minds and stitched nightmares.
We're tired of dreaming of molten gold and crooked illusions.
Ruby glass fingertips trail along the purple cuts
tattooed on our bleeding arms.
Our bones, now tainted by acid rain and alcohol,
used to sing of happy evenings under plastic umbrellas.
They wince in pain and roar in agony, combusting in whiplashes.
We burn away in stinging limbs and hollow souls—
muted by impending dreams around cigars and red wine.
Burns and stings damp our life; the chains tangled harder
around our bodies: too fast yet too slow near death.
We're tired of our demons and scars.
Girls like us could never die in peace—
we're so tired of everything,
but mostly,
ourselves.
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A/N: This's inspired by a poem I read weeks ago. Let's tap the little button hoping that things will turn up soon.
©May 25, 2023. Sreeja Naskar.