Seventeen

Mon, 11/11/2013 - 16:39 -- Zoeko

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Like the shimmering dust of gunpowder
I was wounded by his eyes like gunpowder
Lifeless, but with the potential to combust
Like that paints the parking lot
Beneath our feet
Bare, like the plates his mother sets on the table with weathered hands
That have lifted too many silent oaths and broken promises
From the ground
She will lock them in the cabinets as her porcelain family secrets
As she apologizes for her son's hollow stomach
But his hands, bound in fists, claw at adulthood
Shrouded by the immeasurable deficiencies
Itching for an uppercut, to collide with bone
His mouth glued shut, I can almost hear the cruel howl
Scathing enough to make the dead claw at the earth we stand on
Those same fists extend like velvety flower petals
Hungry for linen and copper, hungry
Wrapping themselves around my arm as they breathe the word: "wait" 
For his age, barely splattered across two decades
Cannot be rewound or rewritten
And it is etched in his thoughts as time betrays him
As hunger pains, and death follows
His anger bleeds into me like blood into water
He whispers contemptuously that this world is not ours
That we are the same
And I ache to protect him from the acidity of reality
Of disparity
As my nightmares, sewn by his defeated gaze, litter the night
His gunpowder eyes cut me open
Tear at my skin
If only I'd bled gold for him
If only I'd bled gold.
 

 

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