We Sad Girls

We have desperate running through us. We cut sadness into hills like rain. We move our bodies—fast, big, bronzed/brown/bold—against and through street corners, front doors, turnstiles, trapdoors, dragging unhappiness behind us on a leash. We stand in the shower in all of our clothes, we leave them behind in a black heap, we let the stench chase us down the hall and follow us into bed.

We fuck and sometimes we moan. We feel on our neck. We slip these wet panties down around our ankles, move just right and dig for clean. Our hair crinkles cellophane. We place our cold feet on the dog’s belly and wait.

And yes, we sling shit. We hide in the middle of train cars, legs crossed on blue seats. It’s late, so we talk time travel; we talk lust; we talk talk. We rinse our hands in the sink where there is no soap. In the mirror we part our hair, part our lips, and then part, still pursued.

We drink from vases. We drink up to our madness. We take rage and say its name to the night. (To our screens, we say, confide confide, and confide.) In the light we say rage too, but we say much worse. To each other – oh, to each other. We say what we say, which feels like the veins in our legs, which is to say, feels like nothing.

We drag our nails across shingles on our back. We won’t heal, won’t heel. We loop into sheets and bury our breathing bodies into mattresses. We wait the weekend under cover of tepid darkness. We pull deep. We smell the stench of us, putrid and puerile. We believe now in the traitorous nature of pores. What leaks out in slumber will find us. Has found us.

We hope for the boom. We are taken out of the bed and placed back again. We hope for the splitting headache of thunder. We wait. We say anticipation. We say that we would give anything to bury anticipation, half-dead, in the yard. We fight to believe our entire lives won’t look like today.

And fine. We’ll answer the phone, we’ll stand in front of mirrors again and hang reluctance from our limbs like gauzy gowns. We’ll get dressed in the sorrow and uncertainty of fog, we’ll slide on tight layers—and fuck, ok, we look good.

We find you later. Look how the fabric clings to our rawest curves. Imagine how sheer we’ll be under your hands. We wear vulnerability in a thin chain—tell us how it catches the light. Tell us how it draws you in. Ask: Is this real? Curled in a booth, we feel you grow hard. We invite you to touch, to slide your fingers where we can’t see. Let us ride against you, let us into your ear, let us home with you, let us come.

And let us unfurl ourselves from sleep in sharp sunlight. Let us taste again and remember we are more than saliva and tongues. We remember how you wanted to fill our vacant spaces, so we duck your embrace—we like being swollen with rooms. We see ourselves enter and exit you like air. We see ourselves in alterations; we see our spines, mottled and fine, in your floor-length mirror. We place tenderness on your cheek in farewell, we place you behind skeins of what’s left us. Then we cut into rain, still pursued.