snow day justwrite

The light outside is the color my palms would be if they didn't have so many creases, if I were smooth like sand after it had been melted, if I could pour myself on the floor in front of your feet and dare you to find a flaw. There are so many you can't pinpoint one, trying to find a limb in a forest, a drop of blood in my arteries, my pulse so fast and hard but never catching up to itself. There is dust in one of my eyes, dust that fell from a shelf like a snowflake, a tiny parachute, a dandelion wish, rising and falling at once like how I breathe when I'm asleep. You tell me to blink, tell me to cry. I never could make myself cry, but when my father cries, his tears form rivers across my cheek bones. I tell you I think I'm made of ivory but really I'm not so precious. The color in my eyes stains my skin, ink blots that can't be interpreted as anything but static; my words are noise crafted to fill space. My lips assault your silence, leave fingerprints behind. There are maps of the constellations carved into my bones, bones so hollow you thought I could fly when you first met me, my breath parting the air like steam and yours caught, hiding in your throat. My whispers seeped into your bloodstream. I can still hear them, whirring past your ears. They sound like the ocean when the beach is covered in snow, red wine spilled across it, a stain you think is blood, melting everything it touches until it finds the ground. Your footprints used to be there; I remember trying to fill them, watching how I could only ever stand in shadow because light couldn't find its way beneath my feet. But I'm glass now, transparent, waiting for your breath to grow across me like frost or moss or words, to etch its pictures into me, to tell me I'm not a mistake.

visiting creative writing club and going through krut withdrawal justwrite

S stands for certified like a name on a birth certificate folded into the third drawer in my dresser, packets of seeds on the floor by my bed so I can remember thoughts spreading like wildflowers before I fall asleep and whisper to you that I want to be a vine because they are the only plant that grows toward touch. I remember the afternoon you fingerpainted my skin with shadows that I can still see today, the inkwells under my eyes pouring out onto the table, a black hole where my pupils wander, trying to remember their lessons but losing their footprints in puddles of ink. At home, the puddles are frozen and crack beneath my weight, crack like eggshells between your palms, thinking about the frailty of life and not remembering you've been making breakfast until the room is full of smoke and your lungs shake you back out of your mind, the french toast burning on the stove, an audience of strangers watching moss grow over your feet as your bones become stone, crack in the winter because water expands when it becomes ice, struggling to fill up space that isn't there. I'm a certified lifeguard who never learned to swim because the only pools I've ever seen were in your eyes, surrounded by irises, reflecting sunsets and my own face when the ripples stop and I try to memorize the lines on my cheeks, wondering if they are laugh lines or worry lines when really they're all life lines, sweat carving roadmaps into my body, only ever telling me where I've been.