For Christopher
10:53 a.m.
Monday.
Overcast.
- The small man in the black box flickers
In beaded white
From the opposite side of the striped walk.
Step off from the curb.
- Yesterday, you counted eleven lines of paint
Slipping between you and the street pavement.
Look up from the ground today.
- See the boy with the broken knuckles.
His hair is longer than it used to be.
He is already looking at you.
Go. Quickly.
- Look down again.
Maybe if you don’t see him,
He won’t see you.
- Look up again,
Meet him on the opposite curb.
Do not let him touch you.
- When he touches you,
Don’t look at him.
- When you look at him—
Do not remember that hot afternoon under the thick, June air. The teeth—spitting up dry bones from beneath the skin—calloused, curdled teeth falling in and out of a locked jaw. The taste of sour milk on his breath, on your breath. White knuckles and his dirty fingernails gnawing up the line in your back. No one can hear you. He stretches your legs in the dried weeds—the crackling weeds and the dark, bruised red and green leaves slicked with tart oil. The tart oil spilling into the gash between your skin and the ground. The rash for three weeks afterward. The rash—red berries—pickling the skin over your spine. The rash in your blood. His hands in your blood. His hands twisting, scraping the butter knife down in the corners of the jelly jar. Red berries. Red skin. Red veins peeling from under his eyelids. The sun peeling in star-cut fractals from between the branches of stark ivy. The sun peeling in red. Your flesh peeling in red.
- Leave him for the staircase.
He will not follow you.
10:55 a.m.
Monday.
Still overcast.
For the Prom Queen
You always tear your fingernails off on purpose,
swipe blue men’s deodorant
in the crook between
white ribcage and brachium.
Once a week
you take a pink razor
(because they only come in pink)
along your jawline,
under your sideburns,
kissing just above
your Cupid’s bow.
Ironically, however,
it’s been eighteen weeks
since the last time you shaved your legs.
Dear Prom Queen,
Do you remember
the night those blushing fingers
draped a circlet
of crystal petals and rain
against your crown?
All you could think of
were the bloodstains
mottling your nude hosiery;
the mauve creases cut sharply
in a matte ribbon over your teeth;
the blueberry flesh
packaged stiffly,
marred knuckle curled over marred knuckle,
into two white pointed-toes;
the bitter, red stains
smeared behind each heel;
how painful it was
to have been noticed.
Afterwards,
you packed the tea-length organza
behind a white curtain
in the farthest corner
of a room that doesn’t belong to you.
You hung it with the other skins —
the haltered navy one
with the purpled neck
and bloodied ankles;
the rose chiffon
with the Bardot collarbones,
paled by late-April sweat;
the fragrant one
dappled in pale greenery
and dusted hollyhock.
Your mother wonders why you’ve stopped smiling.
Maybe it’s because you aren’t any good at housekeeping,
or maybe it’s because the Bad Man looked at you the wrong way
on the crosswalk again,
or because you shouldn’t have worn shorts that day —
because people will look at you the wrong way
whenever you wear them —
or because the plastic claws
on that tiara made you out to be something you’re not,
or because those razors have only ever come
in that one color,
or because the bloodstains never came out,
0r because there are just too many skins
in that closet.
Rachel Anne Surgalski is eighteen years old and currently resides in the relatively pleasant town of Santa Cruz, California. When she isn’t writing autobiographical poetry, she likes to plant succulents in tea pots.