i was a born a golden girl

a word seeker

with an appetite that would never be filled

and from a young age i learned how to pick the words up off the page

and dribble them slowly into my mouth

savoring the taste of adjectives and end marks

and i was never word full.

once i tried to make my own words

because i felt the part of a thief

taking words that were never mine

and letting them form stories that i could never tell

but no matter how much i tried

my own golden words wouldn’t form

leaving me a wannabe writer

with marker stains on her fingers.

gradually i stopped trying to make my own words

and just took pictures and letters from other people

who put them down in the page

not knowing a not-really word thief

could pull them right off

in long, black twisted lines

that twined around her arms and fingers

making her seem less of a golden girl.

golden girl (?)

wannabe writer

and a not-really word thief

my brother was not like me at all

because he was a blue boy who knew what words to say

and twisted them to form perfect spider webs

that always caught the unassuming fly (me)

and i always was left jealous that he could

use words that were his own

and every time i fell

until one day he grew sick of making webs as a blue boy

and packed all his words in a suitcase

along with a picture or two

and he waved his car keys in farewell

as this blue boy left as a blue man.

when i was older i didn’t feel like a golden girl

i felt like a wannabe everything,

because my word appetite was growing stronger

and numbers displayed on a thin black square

were suddenly burning through and inffecting

the words i had stolen from novels and magazines alike

(numbers are like that)

and suddenly i made myself not word hungry anymore

because i wanted to be a wispy golden girl

with a waist that poetic words could twine about

(poetic words are the most delicate, like snowflakes, like the blue boy’s man’s spider web.)

my stolen word were dry

the ink i’d stolen with them as dried up as soon as it left the page

and they caught ablaze that lit up the sky of eyes

and made a ring of gold around my pupil

like i was a golden girl

(i wasn’t)

but soon the sky was choked with ash

and even the embers that were the skeleton of these stolen words

refused to burn to be saved

because they were never mine to have.

and i was left a wordless girl

a wannabe everything

a word-thief behind bars.

so the wordless girl that i was

lost the sweet taste of words

(they taste like lemonade, honey, blackberries and ocean water)

and so she didn’t care that she was word-starving

she didn’t care if she was a wannabe everything

and a word thief in an iron cage

she only cared if poetic words could fit around her waist

and brush over her skin

so for a moment she wouldn’t feel like

the inky expanse of her heart

hadn’t been ripped and stitched together again

using numbers.

one day this girl

picked up a book that used to be her favorite

and dared to crack up the first page

which she knew by heart

because she had smiled when the 12pt words in this page

had slid down her throat

because they were the closest thing to her own words

(if she had any)

that she had ever found

but she found that the page was blank

only a creamy white rectangle

(other people could see the words)

and it was then this wordless broken girl

let some of the salt water she had collected

from tasting words all her life

run down her cheeks from the grey site of destruction

and the ring of yellow

(a scar left from her once-burning words)

that were her eyes.

a wannabe golden girl girl with poetic waist

a wordless girl

and a withering away word thief

and so i

girl who used to be golden

the word thief in jail

a wasteland of word skeletons

a girl who is word starving for a poetic waist

 i

shattered

and the plastered skin that i had somehow adopted broke

and my (real) metallic golden skin glinted

and my true voice left my throatin a raw almost-plea

because all the words that i had been suppressing

by leaving myself word starved

into my veins and was pumped by my heart

where brittle numbers had stitched both ventricles together again

(the blue boy man will always have half)

and for the first time

since the golden girl had been born a word seeker

she found what she had been looking for.

a golden girl (with the most poetic not-skinny waist)

a fledgling writer (and poetess)

a word thief no-more 

a word seeker who found her words.