Outtakes
Lines I Didn’t Want to Lose
Welcome to the Lines I Could Not Lose.
Pain is the cigarette my best friend lit and fed me. Immediate cough. Slow, bitter, ember lip. I pulled so hard tar dragged the floor of my lungs, sinking into the dark animal box of me. She disappeared in the smoke I spit.
I take a winding trail, where silver-capped pine cones tangle our manes together now. Braided.
The forest exhales, fog tendrils like spilled secrets. God forgot this place.
That ripping diner seat stuffed with vintage-pink receipts. I order my specialty, a caffeine necessity and one stale, cherry-filled sweet.
Spill milk, crack a mirror, lay your hat on my bed, cross my path with a black kitten. What’s luck?
River runs backward, carrying the drowned upstream, memory undone.
Susan, pale and black-eyed, looks for her man outside from the same pot every day. Planted.
Crows pluck the last fruit, red pulp dripping on tombstones, summer’s throat is cut.
A girl with crow feathers for hair whispered a spell as a prayer. To the cratered old moon, said, “maledictum,” left a puff of black smoke in the air.
Open the book of the fox. See what he foretells. Read the trickster’s scripture with your mind’s eye.
My childhood haunts me like a ghost in a shell making ocean sounds.
Veils of web are draped, branches like patient brides, prey wound into their vows.
Fire illuminated the underbelly of the trees, exposing all the silvery branches and leaves, casting a warmth spread wide enough to make the shed glow a crimsony red.
Rotten, brown-green leaves, summer's beauty molds, the garden is laid to rest.
Petals, powdered, still pink, pressed flat in a glass frame, like your apology blooms here, too late.
Candy, a pink regret, your kiss and gum ball coins. The air still tastes too sweet to be savory.
Linens, warm as promised, folded like a white swan. Even the sheets wear a fancy costume.
Moss grips the cold cross, something crawls along the stone, “Remember my touch.”
Indigo waters, reflecting moon’s broad craters, ripple calls to me.
Carry me on your back, my arms around your neck, through all the scratchy bramble grass. Just us.
Opal, porcelain ghost, a creak across the floor. Something forgotten is breathing. Don’t move.
Now we're in a duel between two liars playing our roles with pants on fire, performing with the curtains drawn the doors all locked, audience, gone.
We kept our distance, trading a single glance, as the solid ground shifted across campus, like the ground had been a dirty rug; lifted and shaken.
Cold cut through the early glow precise and surgical, then the rumbling shifted; a low, metallic screech like a train breaking, begging to breach before it crushes whatever’s waiting on the tracks.
Wanting kept me gnawing. Even when nothing came, my teeth kept grinding and chewing. Hungry.
I wish there was a zipper in the center of my forehead, to unzip myself slowly, where the teeth catch at the ribs. I would step out damp and shaking, lay my body on the floor like a shed thing. I’d knock the bones together to see which ones still ring. If they don’t, I’d bury them, give them permission to stop holding me.
Cherry girl in your mouth, bloody sugar dripping down. You forgot there even was the pit.
“You are clean. He has forgiven.” We repeated, again, and only stopped when given permission.
All spells are short and cast a sound, lasts far beyond the rhyme of gone with gone. A gun is a kind of wand.
Knee-deep in my nightmare, the same as always, I bite into an apple, expect the sweet, golden taste. Instead I bite a pink, fleshy thing that squirms. Too late, I realize and swallow the worm.
Smoke drifts; translucent jellyfish pulsing through the air.
That night, rain pittered on the mausoleum roof. We slept close. cut feet, raw throats, legs twisted in wet grass, waiting for whatever He might forgive.
Today I carried my bones like a house key. used, cold, necessary.
You placed it firmly in my hand, a prop, you said, a stand-in thing. Cold metal. Plastic grip. Too heavy for pretending.
Well y’all, once again, thank you for reading if you made it this far.<3
I’m always cooking up more to share, that I just can’t wait to post. As always, I’m writing, editing, deleting, rewriting, pacing, muttering, communing with the dead in the meantime.
Oh, and look out for HOLDING ONTO YOU coming February 13th!
Ok, luv you, bye. 😚
—Ramona Moth
This lines are my favorites and you made me want to quit smoking 😁! I love your poetry, I can feel the passion! Let's read each other if you like, have a wonderful day!
The amalgamation of lines can be some of the rawest poetry I love it!