locks of hair by zoe alexandra

I keep having to remind myself

that they are just feelings

that you have them too

even though you can slip yours behind

your long black hair and forget



My hair is short and I cannot tuck secrets

Into the lining of my jacket



If my face is your compass then

You are moving in the wrong direction

I believe in your eyelashes

The soft flutter of one against the other

The way you look at me

But I bet you look at everybody that way



Your hair is electric

Your eyes are smoldering through

My tightly wound string of my confidence

You are the seeing the actual me

You are seeing the authentic me

And I bet you want to wash your hands of it.

Last night I drove through the darkness

Through New Rochelle and New Haven

All the lamplights on the highway looked like constellations

Telling me to run the fuck away



The night before

We were flying down the Boston Turnpike

All the way to Vermont

With my best friend,

I am finally safe

I can finally spill the alphabet soup

Acrid red from my dirty mouth

Not afraid to be unlovable anymore

(if i am then…so what…)



You're from Tempe, Arizona

Where my best friend used to cook up batches of acid

And crack

And heroin

And that's how I know you had to come back

To Connecticut where they loaded you up with

Thorazine and methadone

And you crawled around in some dimly lit basement

And played with bugs.



I only loved you because you were so far from my grasp

I only loved you because I could never touch you

You were magical and I was on a pink cloud

My first week crying

Your hair was above water

Somehow your eyes were still clear pools

Like crystal balls

Like Russian roulette I knew that you'd die

Or I'd die



but I'd never get to sink my fingers into your back

Hold you correctly

And then I did

Felt you there beneath me

Thought I was sinking

Thought if I had you

I wouldn't want you anymore

Your fingers up my cunt

Your crooked fingers in my mouth

Biting down hard

Trying to be quiet

Trying to move like some starlet

From the pages of a glossy magazine

Trying to let you catch me

In all the right lights.



But we're just friends now

We're just friends like you said

And I had to etch it into my hemisphere

Because yours is warmer

Yours is closer to the equator

And I'm out of sunscreen

And I'm feeling lost on this desert landscape

Everything is as barren as my mother's womb

Everything is drying up

My skin is peeling

My lips aren't flower petals anymore.



I won't tell anyone about this

I won't tell anyone except:

God and Jesus and Mary Magdalene

And my best-friend and that girl from Ferry St. that I used to know.

I live my life for a live wire

I lay myself on the telephone line

I wait for you to pick up the receiver

And if you don't I sob into my flannel sheets

It is this tiny inferno that keeps building inside me

It's this little flame

That won't let me fall to ashes

It's you looking at me

Then looking away



Begging me to turn back around

To see if your eyes widen

If a stare like yours could ever burn through mine.

Made in secret

See you tomorrow

Made in secret

See you later

Made in secret

See you Friday

Made in secret

See you whenever



I wish you hadn't made it real,

This poem would be propaganda

If this was 1937 it would be confiscated

By someone in a blue suit

I'd be wearing your red letter

I'd be crying in kitten heels

I'd be cuffed and thrown against a fencepost

I'd think it was all really romantic.

If all feelings are trivial

Than so are yours

If you have any.



I don't play those sick games anymore;

Come here, A little closer, Come here

Get the fuck away from me

Everyone's bleeding

Everyone's bleeding from their lips

And nose and eyes

Everyone's bleeding from their aorta

And their fibroids and their bowels

Just not everyone can see it

But I can feel it

It's internal

I'm taking a turn for the worst.



If you loved my mouth then you'd know

I could tell you things no one else could

Sick things that would make your ears ring for days

You could brainwash me and make me proper

I'd wear whatever you wanted

I'd wear your black eye

I'd wear nothing at all



The truth is I just want your hair

As symbolic as it may sound

Once I wanted to dye and cut and maim

My hair and my mom said it was psychosis

I think I just want your hair

To wrap around me to tie to trees

To inhale deeply

To exhale like a drag from a menthol cigarette

When you say you're quitting smoking

I think it's a trick

I think you're quitting me

I think I've lost my sheen

I think I'm not that nice-looking girl anymore

I think I need you all over again.


I am a twenty-three year old female from Queens, NY whose work has been published in Zygote In My Coffee, Silenced Press, Madswirl.com, Hipsterotica, Deconstruction Quarterly, The Common-Line Project, Best Lesbian Erotica 2007 (cleis press) and will appear in the future Zygote in My Coffee zine print edition of December 2007 as well as in Remark Magazine, Debris Magazine, Word Riot and Pink Elephants on Review.