josephine,
you lay on the carpet
and stain my skin
with your smiles,
bleach white
and crooked-beautiful.
with your bouncing heels
and thin open arms,
we danced in a shed
of wooden splinters
and violin laughter.
sitting on a deck
and counting every star
that burned and died,
crescendos in the night.
your father
playing the guitar,
his calloused fingers
brushing away fireflies
that we caught
and hid under bell jars
in the garden.
we'd watch them
from our bedroom window,
the nighttime air
seeping into
our bruised arms,
dripping into our collarbones
and falling into the carpet
as the morning arrived,
and you stained me
with your smiles,
bleach white
and crooked-beautiful.
flowers grow
through the stones
and the lid of the coffin,
summer amber eyes
are covered in a cocoon
of the air
we once inhaled
with the excitement
about filled lungs
that new-born babies had
as they arrived in a world
of arms and bleached white.
the silent violins
and the hardwood floors
and the sad straight smiles
and the dying fireflies
are enough to drive one crazy.
josephine,
you stained me.
