She wore pink, and
black latex, and
her platinum hair like a modern-day Marilyn
Monroe.

She was soaked in seduction,
opened like a lotus in front of a camera, but
unfurled into introversion away from its
gaze.

In those moments, I only ever wanted to
crawl inside her, and
wrap her shy and fragile whimsy around my
shoulders.
Hold her in my hands like a tiny bird.

It sounds stupid, but
I would have washed her feet with my hair.

It sounds stupid, but
I would have done anything to be a feather in her pillow.
A stroke of her pen.
The buckle on one of her Mary Janes.

School days:
pulled back hair, and
clean white,
knee-high socks.
Dark blue eyes
contemplating
beneath a blonde fringe.
They could see you
because
they’d seen too much. 

Wide, wild eyes,
that have always gazed upwards
for approval; a little bird looking for the consent to fly.

She said she liked Marilyn Manson because he’s shy. 

She’s a clone for Barbie, but
she’d rather be Ken.

School days:
I hungered to learn how many scars she had, and
to memorise the texture of her tongue.

The sound of her voice:
a child in sunshine,
Catwoman,
the burnt outer layer of a toasted marshmallow.

She was everything a teenage boy was supposed to want, but
I really just wanted to dust off her sparkle for her.

What was crazy to me wasn’t that I could love her, but 

that I could love again at all.