dirty laundry

TITLE: "dirty laundry"

AUTHOR: Arianna Kanji

bite the fingers that knead you

down darkened cross stitches on pastry-thin skin

split apart like the silly string draped on forgotten stairwells 

and tied to outdated crosses. 

pitch the ball thrown into your glassy eyes

three candles embedded like wax cages on your boney molars

don’t let it fly

let it drop

taste the dust splitting apart your demon tongue

saying ‘hit the bitch’ too close to a fragmented boy’s ear 

the gun’s shadow will tempt him to break apart the sun. 

spill secrets on cracked mirrors 

and broken toilets 

and age-old cowboy boots,

spin the yarn so well it knots up and yet does not, 

be two things at once, 

and if you can’t then be nothing. 

you left me with a tongue too sharp to fit my mouth

and double jointed elbows 

and a crass unibrow that i furrow seventeen times a day, 

but i changed and i shaved and i smoked the grimy grass 

to clog the ghost fingers scraping at my lungs 

like youth to peach fuzz.

you left me with bread that fights back when crushed,

and there’s bitter in the sweet taste of sisterhood’s blood 

draining from my empty womb, 

into the pit of prickled bloodlines 

rotting unwashed on familial clotheslines.