The Moon Watches

"I love you, Spanish girl," he says.

I love you I love you I love you

They are the words that she always

Wanted to hear.

So the Spanish girl

Who is waitingwaitingwaiting for another, more beautiful one,

Opens eyes the color of autumn and looks at the boy,

And opens them wider when he kisses her.

And then

And then

And then she is hurting

She is hurting because the boy won't

Stop.

Her back is slammed against matted, yellow grass.

Her arms are pinned to sordid, grimy concrete.

Pianist digits splay and drum on

Xylophonic ribs

And when she looks up, she sees that

A bloody, dying sun

Casts spider leg shadows from his long eyelashes

And turns his evil eyes to lifeless glass.

("Monster," she whispers.)

And there are beads of sweat on his forehead

And on his lip.

(The same lips that pressed their bitter selves to hers.)

"I love you, Spanish girl," the boy says

And the way he says it makes the Spanish girl cry.

And she is crying on the inside.

And she is crying on the outside.

She is begging and breaking

Until the world is upside down.

And she can't

Stop.

So she does the next best thing

And pictures of refuge spin behind powdered eyelids,

Her tongue dances with screams of help behind smeared lips

(Both painted so she could look like

The other beautiful girl)

She is still crying when he leaves her

Broken with blossoming purple beneath her skin

That match the boy's long fingers

From where he didn't let go.

From where he didn't

Stop.

"I love you, Spanish girl," the boy had said.

But she hates the boy for doing this to her.

(And herself, a little, for letting him)

And she hates the beautiful girl for leaving her.

And she hates the rest of the world

Because she is not free

And she never will be.

And the Spanish girl looks at the sky

And she used to think there'd never

Be enough,

But now,

She is suffocating

Each breath is cacophonous

And clamors in her ears.

The stars make her feel

Just so finite.

And she wished that everything would just

Stop.