LIPSTICK

By Tamryn Spruill 

---

​my generosity transforms  
into a cavalcade of
fibroblasts:
connective tissue linking me eternal  
to ancestors
living inside my DNA


their impulse
to scarify
pulsates through me
like bass
hyping a troupe of
pole-grinding clit waggers
in a club


pull me across generations
like a BLACK HOLE’s hunger
leave me swimming
in a STAR POOL of belonging
against inevitable
DARK MATTER
​​

like the SHADOW that moved in with me

comfortable enough to leave her hairbrush ..... laptop ..... sketchpad ..... hoodie ..... tangle of unwashed threadbare t-shirts she rotated throughout the week ..... cat-eye sunglasses ..... leisure reading, like IF YOU FEEL TOO MUCH and …OR NOT TO BE: A Collection of Suicide Notes ..... coffee mugs ..... negligent coffee rings embossed café-con-leche on tabletops ..... nail polishes in neon blue and yellow to produce nuclear sea-creature green fingernails ..... a grid-lined Moleskin notebook marked with strange codes: numbers * + & # ^ = symbols stick-figure drawings scrawled in puffy pink handwriting ..... alcoholic tampons soaking in baby-food jars ..... a half-empty bottle of Monkey Shoulder the color of irradiated piss

strewn haphazardly throughout various rooms

(if i could've
i would’ve peeled that water-jug tattoo from her forearm
taped it ragged
against the alluring black of
my refrigerator door)

///

i introduced her to some of my friends but rarely let anyone get to know her 

her furtive business-trip departures coincided with my interstitial happiness anyway
(as if my brain had dulled so severely by lassitude basic math was now beyond my reach)  

and when my heart ached for the familiarity of well-worn shoes 
i conjured her spirit in a ritual involving matte-black mouth paint and candle flames

and when i breathed out the light
i breathed out--

and into

​a mirror-facing smile that reminded me of a teeth-whitening regimen
i’d been meaning to buy

Copyright © 2012-2021 Tamryn Spruill.