I watched her spit out broken stitched spider webs with her tongue.
And I wondered if that’s what it’s like to hold your words for so long.
She reached out her hand in attempt to paint me sentences.
But I could tell that every sunrise she ever painted meant nothing.




& I sat on the wooden bench wondering if she would cry.
And if I would find my own eyes filled with tears just to show her pity.
But she only wrapped herself in a ball and I imagined myself guessing at her uneasy structures.
Like this was only a game of charades. & I was only trying to color pencil her a world out of grey lead.





It began to rain that day.
Somewhere between the statue poses we both occupied.
And the distant staring stars that held no pity for us to shoot across the sky and disappear.
& The sky rained answers that neither of us could see beyond the clouds.





That we refused to listen to.
Just to pretend that us being wrong only meant we were right.




She walked away while purging spider webs down her dress.
And I could only watch letters pour from scarlet red fingers into the mud.
She dug her feet into the cement, scratching stones into her skin.
& The sun rose from cloudy skies.





While I watched her walk away from melted crayons and broken pencils.
Wishing she’d paint me something. Just so I could remember.




I stood there for a while tracing my creases with red crayons.
Trying to fix all the uneven skin that itched my creaking bones.
And as the sunset went down between the trees, I knew that the world wasn’t meant to be anything.
And as jagged as I felt, I knew the world felt the same. Trying to fix the flaws of perfection.





That perfection would only flaw.





The girl came back that night as I fumbled through dead grass trying to find green.
Wondering if the half-inch crayon could fix all of this.
And she grabbed my hand in hers releasing all the colors from my body.
And I never felt so dead staring at the only thing I thought could understand.





And I cried.





She held a mirror and placed it in front of my face.
While I retraced the red markings I covered myself in hours ago.
I watched the mud cake my skin grey.
She walked away leaving me with the image of myself in my own feeble hands.





And in the morning I unstitched the spider webs that locked my tongue for so long.
While I poured out the stories that my fingers forgot to write. I remembered. Everything.
And as I erased the red lines on torn skin.
I felt the imperfections that I tried to erase, breathe.








And I colored the sky that morning.
With every broken colored pencil. And every half-inch crayon.














I knew.

























This was perfection.

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