all the pretty horses

where i come from...poetry is an outlaw thing...

so i'm trying my best to be original in a coffee shop in vegas, where no one is really listening, and the baristas can't seem to get my orders right...it's not that i mind coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup...it's that i ordered tea...

i tell them to take a picture, that it will last longer...that the way they feel about what i have to say, has little to no bearing on the way my heart will speak...that i still need time to spread my words like butter to your toast...that i haven't drowned enough just yet...

i need more water.

something is happening here...and i'm not sure...that the men i know, are doing much about it...i haven't told them that i want to be "that naked woman in the pictures"...i haven't told them..."long after you're gone, my face will be forever ingrained in the picture books, and goddamn if i wasn't beautiful"...

i haven't told them that my heart belongs to all of them, and to none of them...

i tell them to take a picture, that it will last longer...that we play with each other's hearts like silly putty, and way too much...and they're becoming fused with hair, and are black from newsprint and dirty fingers rolling rolling rolling stretching stretching stretching...as cheap as silly putty is, simply buy more...

like hearts.

i'm spilling suitcases of broken glass in my dreams, and i'm screaming for someone to help me clean it up...to not leave any behind...

i'm not sure the significance of much these days...

but i know the ocean hates me.

and that the sun most certainly, definitely, completely has it out for me.

i tell them to take a picture, that it will last longer...that beauty is fleeting as is youth...that we are but a fraction of ourselves at our greatest, and always a fraction of our worst...that the measure of a man can't be truly measured except by sizing up the woman he has chosen to love...faceless, adept, disarming...

i broke the legs off of the blue plastic horse you gave me...he looks as though he's going somewhere more important than i was to you...his head hangs low, as if to weep, silently...i've broken many things, and don't think my character should be based on that fact alone.

i press the sharp, broken stumps he's left with, into the meat of my hand, and try to feel more than just indifference.

i tell them to take a picture, that it will last longer...that sometimes...this computer breaks...sometimes, i know no other way...sometimes i'm not sure who's breaking me...and i'm sure, that we all, weep silently...