Your Last Chance // Natalie

Photo by Jaspereology from Pexels

You can drive faster but you can’t run over the guilt.

The trust we built turned into lust, easily killed

By another boy seeing loyalty as the perfect gilt

Despite bodies decomposing, pale and well chilled.

You can scream louder but you can’t avoid the noise.

Can’t hear the radio or your mother’s tired voice.

I knew you’ve tried to drown this pain with the boys.

Your prey becomes the hunter that only love destroys.

There’s my humming in your head that will never leave,

A sharp, moonlit fantasy of how you’ll never be free.

You promised the night you pulled me too close to heave

That you’ll treat her better than me.

But then you saw Jenny

And forgot about poor Natalie.

Both are now haunting you in your sleep.

-JW

No Light

Photo by Maria Eduarda Tavares from Pexels

Red lollipop between her pale blue cheeks,

She’s not taking any prisoners today.

Second-hand bag and third rate heels.

Her mother’s hips and dad’s ashtray.

She stands tall by the neon but feels so small.

Parents never lifted her up very high.

Never her father’s princess of the ball,

Always the first to get a black eye.

With so much fake light, it’s hard to see stars

But she squints each night to catch one.

When the scenery turns into cold iron bars,

She’s off in another car,

Pretending to chase a mock sun.

-JW

Waterproof

Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels

You should never speak to me again or even look at this direction.

The floor is made of paper cut-outs of your short aggressions.

I’m dirty, I haven’t been baptized since you entered the room.

Ceiling hanging over my neck as a guillotine but you’re yet to learn –

Under pressure I bloom.

All that’s been taken by you during decades, please, take even more.

My back is strong enough to never look back, doesn’t mean it’s not soar.

The next time we go toe to toe, don’t beg me to stay like you always do.

You should never speak of me again or ever assume for one second

My soul isn’t waterproof.

-JW

Honey Honey

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

Honey, the kids aren’t doing alright this time around –

Our screaming from dusk till dawn is not like the movies have shown

And The Death Watch is making its rounds.

But honey, it’s not that gruesome, we didn’t hit hard –

The big sister got what’s coming, the little sister learned how to sprint

And how to keep up the guard.

And Hun, it’s not unusual, violence is what keeps us together –

A vulture and its prey… Which one of them is the killer? Do we even care

If they’re birds of a feather?

Honey, the little one seems traumatized, should we be quiet –

Or should she learn the rules to being her mother’s daughter already

Before starting a riot?

Oh, Hun, she’s not taking the yelling and fists too well –

Are we not normalizing the scenery enough with the props and all?

Will she hate us if she dwells?

***

“Honey, Honey, the kids aren’t doing alright still, I’m sorry to break it.

One of you under the ground, the other continuing the legacy of trauma –

It is not my place to strangle your stamina or shake it

But you could have picked a better melodrama

Than the lives you ruined by trying to make it.”

-JW

Purposeful Violence

Photo by Tyler Lastovich from Pexels

My friends heard you know how frisky I get when I stand by a man like you.

There you are, punching holes in my paper walls after learning that we’re through.

No call backs though, no carton airplanes flying off this cliff I’ve put you on.

Six long months of miseries and resolving your twisted mind – do you even know

How much it hurts? I bet you don’t.

Never have I admitted to liking this game you’re lobbying but I read the rules –

A punch to the gut is a sign of love, a stab in the back is love times two.

Some days I wonder how I got that far, tearing myself up for a taste of passion –

The closest feeling to being cut in pieces with a hot knife and distributed

To everyone I hate in rations.

“Never trust a perfect person,” they say, but then ask you to stop being picky.

Apparently romance is only great if the ice is thin and each step is tricky.

Let’s be truthful – it’s all about how it seems, not how it feels, haven’t you noticed?

The worse your mental state gets with each fight, the more they cheer your passion

And give violence a purpose.

-JW

Black Hair Dye And Hospital Rooms

Photo by Aa Dil from Pexels

Six stitches on my left thigh from the bruising your spite caused.

I bang my neck against the walls but they’re quiet, holding the applause.

No one notices my pleas for painkillers or your black hair dye fumes.

Trapped in a hospital room built out of hunger and imagined dooms.

“You’re not right,” I hear someone think through the yellow brick doors.

I squint but don’t lift my lids off the ground.

Must’ve been the corpse of my imagined flaws.

Six stitches on my scalp from the damage your faulty perception caused.

I claw out my hair but you ask to keep digging my nails with dirty paws –

No one sees as I fade away, begging for a way out, other than the window.

They dye my hair fiery red. I hear someone from the backstage cheer “bingo”.

-JW

Isolated Frequency

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

Sometimes I forget I’m not alone in this fight

And those voices can still tell wrong from right.

I cry myself to sleep when I remember how far

I could run without stones tearing my shoes apart.

But it’s midnight and everyone’s sound asleep.

I guess those demons are mine to keep

And wrangle by suiting their every need.

If I do, my safety’s not guaranteed.

But I look through the window.

I push away greed.

-JW