I don’t want to tell you these stories; I want you to see them for me.
All these ghost stories…
I don’t want to be some queer-ass art student, so in love with their own vision.

I don’t have this in my back pocket, like you do. But boy, I’ve got stories to tell.

Like the one about the carnie, with a lying problem, and way too many years on the road, getting electrocuted for chump.
Or the one about the reformed skinhead, with the anger management problem, and too many years on such a young frame, getting drunk just to get drunk.
Or the ex-con who could kill you, just to say he did, and love you in the same breath.
The boys who watched like sick animals, and the girls with fixed postures.

Or me.
With my hot pop and swagger, with knife in back pocket, as if the face to be confronted still existed, like I’d know what to do if it did. With all my, ‘oh, I got this’
With my, ‘two downtown, one up.’ And ‘I’ll piggyback off this shit,’ and call it up, a favor to the gods.
Wishing so much bone, had not grown, still here as children, pandering sweetly, as memories grow hair.

Still, as a former beauty queen, these things we see, are not meant to be repeated. These things we saw, were not meant to be seen.
Bruised feet and rusty rail yards. Our intentions were never quite as pure as they were that first time. That first night, that first time you fell under the warm reassurances of foreign substances. Of people and of light. The first time you got the shit beat out of you, and she clawed and bit her way into your soft spots.
I am various shades of brown. I am cracked hands, I’m mysterious scars. I am broken arms. I am full of rash thought and impulsive hammering. Nonsensical ramblings. Flirtation.
Nostalgic and sentimental.
I get hot for hatred.
I fall for the sleazy, immature sons of the broken and sunken home.
I never get over the ones that leave first, and the stones they throw.
A romantic.
I want them when they are angry and gone.
Slightly damaged, cynical, distrustful, powerful, angry and here.
And I wish for the ones that are not.
And dream them up in every quiet moment I find in between the spaces.
I laugh at myself when I am too tired to think. I listen to the radio and wonder, what happened to all the good songs? I take blank stares like poison. I have no idea what I’m doing, or why, but I’m sure I’ve got a better clue than you do, sweet heart.
I chew on the toxic remedies for boredom, and a sick, helpless, self-hating, for nothing. 
I crave jail bologna sandwiches, and apple jelly with purple drink. I flirt, with no intentions, and fuck with no love.
You’ll never know what to do at the time it happens.
When the boy starts wearing your jewelry, you can figure what will happen next…eventually.