I remember when
we were younger when
we used to play that
game where we’d curl up in
our sleeping bags (remember,
like cocoons?) and when we
came out, we’d pretend
to be butterflies. Beautiful
and graceful, we’d dance
around the room
in flashing patterns (you
wanted to be a ballerina, I
wanted to be
you) and explode into
the carpet in fits
of exhaustion. Breathing
hard. (If happiness ever
took form it would
have been the
air escaping our
skinny heaving chests.)

That’s the time that
we now refer to as
the Age of Innocence.
That’s when we
were happy. You say
that was the time when
you still thought that
you could be whatever,
you could still be a
ballerina princess. Before
you decided that everyone

Lies. yet to us it is the
Age of Truth, Age of Simplicity,
when gracing the dirty yellowed
carpeting wasn’t any better than
dancing on the surface of the Moon.

Ignorance is bliss, that’s our club
motto – the secret password in this
case, isn’t please, is blood. Only once
your eyes are opened we
can never go back.
Like when we were
butterflies, I have copied
your swirling dancing
swinging legs throughout
my life. But now I’ve come
to realize that ignorance
was never bliss. Curling yourself
up inside wine bottles, boys
curling up inside of you, metallic blades
curling up into the deep flesh
of your thigh – you are ignorant.
You will lick deep down into
sharp tin cans of beer
even if your tongue
is sliced, butchered, peeled off
in layers
like flower petals.

I will not lie to you;
One day
you’ll find
you can no longer speak.

Ignorance is death. And you
have not changed as much
as you think you have
from the little girl who
didn’t want the moon to
the smaller girl who
doesn’t know what
she needs.