LOVE, DUSK
STAR FAEASTREA

i am 14, the age of everything. swimming pool, vanilla, car crash,

love potion, chapstick, twin bed, tongue. everything ripe with the

promise of the first and last time. i am 15, waking up at 4am to lie

next to you in the park. the whole world ours & breathless,

everything damp with morning dew. everything coloured in that

shade of blue that is both embryonic and unrequited. that softens us

like fruit. more subtle than your breath now, hot on my neck,

reminding me what i have always known; everything is pregnant at

dawn. only beautiful people can afford to believe in god. we have

reached another precipice, another constellation, another continent.

the truth is, i never needed to see this much of the world, to be so

utterly the size of myself. i am 19, soaking wet. taking a walk in

the rain because the opposite of empty is full, and no one has

remembered to pack my lunch for a very very long time. because i

didn't know how to tell you that i never wanted a dog, so i bit my

tongue until it became another promise. i am turning 21 in

America, wearing bruises for my birthday. it is snowing and the

sky is violet in protest and acquiescence, like every precious and

illuminated thing we have misplaced. gemstone, cervix, handbrake.

the entirety of summer a single furtive, herringbone gesture.

junejulyaugust. cursiveabrasionundertow. a puddle is an oasis; the

sky is for drowning. i am 23, topless, getting paid in cash to

convince everyone including myself that i am unmoored in an

enviable, semi sardonic kind of way, not a daughter. that i am

organic matter rather than paradigm, soliloquy, & syntax. instead

of a warm thing in the winter of longing. something to be created

and destroyed