I see your hair blowing in the wind well-shampooed, posed, perfectly poised your emotions set just so like a home decorator came through and arranged your pain in neat vignettes a broken mug, a lost ring, a gunshot one set against the other for contrast
you drape yourself in red drawing the curtain to protect yourself even as you turn inside out begging her to trip on your intestines and fall into your arms and wear your blood for a dress
but she persists in wearing white crisp and bleached and insulting taunting you with her starch and her high heels the way she never falls the way you never have to catch her the way she never lets you hold her up
she slaps you when you try to remove her glasses refusing to be blinded by you she keeps her hair up tight against your remodeling advances and will not be your prom date in a button-down white gown lace peeking out from sleeves you will never push up ruffles spreading into bleached-white wings as she ascends to heights too rarefied and towers too ivory for your breath to catch
her hand does not slip from yours she lets go, preferring the embrace of gravity to your own halting attempts to tie her to the earth in red silk and gold claws you did not lose her she was never yours to lose