Girls in Clubs

I thought we were more than just girls in clubs

A pastel pink cigarette I stole from your lips

Payment of my candied kiss, blown into smoke curls and pools

A picture of want

Want, need

The feeling a penny with no shoulders or head, but feathers filigree

We were models that night,

Feet sticky on the seats of culture

Lights and neurones syncopated

Beats and thunder, hypnotised.

You understood the etiquette and took the catwalk clean,

Shook hands with liquor, his woman and hers

As if bolted skyward, Polaris in view

Skunk, spit and gasoline

With only my eyes to breathe

The classical, velvetine girl that you are shouldn’t fasten your hands to my waist like that,

my mind shouted over the waves

My mouth wide and silent to let saltwater in.

If the lights had been brighter, would you have been kinder?

As I’m screaming NO would you falter?

Toxic, intoxicated

TOXIC

You are inching, inching, bristled Medusa,

And I am ITCHING, itching

You wanted all I owned

Perhaps I needed you, but I didn’t want a thing.

I thought you were home

but you were daggers and

needles and

disease down my spine

and the bruises on my lips.

p.s- I am living now, darling,

And I see what you mean.

I am mine to adore, and was never yours to keep.

Even the most breathtaking building is scuffed at the edges.

Holly Parkinson