girls reading novels (draft)

Aurora is named for the lavender equations, the glitter at the end of your spine. Avenues grow contradictory, a length of chain-link divided by the waters murky circle. All the kitchen floors tilt at a seventy degree angle. Intricate societies are discovered among the broken dishes. My limbs are symmetrical, polite. Ask me a question and I answer like rubbing the rim of a drinking glass. See, how I am stitched : the dark fabric of sky, the body torn from petticoats and corsets. The cuts all have names. Dawn and Olivia are favorites among the killers just now emerging from the bushes. The faucet drains its litany of bathrooms with dark lacy corners. We forget the name for sky, the discordant hum of tendons wrapping the twilight. There’s a name for the door that opens into the darkened hallway. Some terrible violence in the way I say open and all the sharp corners.