bIRD bONED

by Taylor Swanner

Image credit: Nastia Petruk on Unsplash

coils of pink hair plaster themselves to my bathroom sink. they must be yours even though you live in Texas and your hair is blue. i think of poems about alchemy and electrons. novels from the perspective of Jesus’ mother and social media posts about religious abuse. when we were thirteen, we didn’t have words for parents who forbade their children from reading their Bibles, for why i came to your house by day and you came to mine by night. when we were thirteen you broke down novels into apples and plums and we ate their words at twilight, spines split between our thighs like prayers

paper girls spill from floorboards, stories with redacted pronouns and revised storylines. they must be yours even though you never let me see them, never let me read them. i think of curves and cleavage and messages you’ve left your future self on top of your dresser. when we were fourteen, we liked the same boy: squinted blue eyes, tall, strawberry blonde. when we were fourteen, we tangled words in the cattails, shedding petals as we exchanged: he loves you he loves you not he loves me he loves me not he loves us he loves us not-

memes of bird boned girls sputter under my fingertips. it must be you even though you live in Texas and your hair is blue. i think of lips split with cackles and those white moons in fingernails. hummingbirds and snakes swimming through lover’s hands. when we were fifteen you lined your eyes with liquid darkness and dyed your hair chlorine blue, were grounded for six months and i fell out of contact with you. when we were fifteen i moved twelve hours away, dated the boy we loved between cattails and petals, and told everyone my favorite color

                                                    was

                       blue

***

Taylor Swanner

Taylor Swanner is a Southwest Florida writer who still thinks of herself primarily as a Kentuckian. She writes about tulips, women’s health, February’s, and feminism. Her other works can be found in FGCU’s literary journal, the Mangrove Review, and the online literary magazine Anti-Heroin Chic.