Gypsy Girl

And she doesn't want to press charges, my yellow cousin - ghost of a gypsy. Drunk off the wine of pressed grapes, repressed screams of sun-shriveled raisins and their dreams interrupted by a manhood deferred. Will she ever sober? Or will they keep handing her glasses overflowing with the burden of knowing.

I never knew. Never knew it could harm me, the ghost of a little girl in the desolate mansion of my manhood. I'm a man now. And then.. I remember, that I have been charged one million volts of change.

Will the ghost of that little girl ever meet my little girl? She's one now she must have been three then, maybe four. She's eighteen now, I'm 25 now, I must have been twelve then. My mother said he was in his 30's and she's now pressing charges, although she's been indited, and I can't blame her. I can't calm her, I want to calm her. I want to call him names, but only mine seems to fit.

C'mon let's see if it fits. Two little boys with a magic marker marked her and it won't come out. "They put it in me!" "No he didn't, what are you talking about? It's not permanent. It'll come out when you wash it." Damn maybe it was permanent. I can't forget. And I hope she doesn't remember. Maybe magic marked her.

Lord I hope he don't pull no dead rabbits out of that hat, what you gonna do then? And what was Mary's story? The story of a little girl with a brother and a couch. She's got a brother, a couch, a sister locked in her bedroom, and a mother on vacation. Lord, don't let her fall asleep.

Her brother's got keys to her dreams. He keeps them on a chain that now cuffs his wrists together. Mummy doesn't believe he did it. But he's left footprints on the insides of his sister's eyelids, and they've learned to walk without him and haunt her daily prayers. And if you rub your fingers ever so softly on her inner thigh, she'll stop you. Having branded your fingertips with the footprints of her brother, the disbelief of her mother, and her sister who called her a slut for sleeping.

Lord, I've known sleeping women. Women who've slept for lives at a time, on sunny afternoons, and purple evenings. Women who sleep sound, and live silently. Some dreams never to be heard of again. I've known sleeping women and have learned to tip-toe into their aroma, and caress myself. They've taught myself how to sleep having swallowed the moon. Sleep 'till mid afternoon. And yearn for the silence of night to sleep sound once again.

Painters of the wind, who know to open the windows before closing their eyes. Finding glory in the palette of their dreams. She had no dreams that night. The windows had been closed. The worlds of her subconscious sufficated and bled rivers of unanticipated shivers and sounds that were not sleep. She was sound asleep, and he came silently.

It wasn't the sun in her eyes, nor the noise of children on route to school. She wrote to the rays of an ingrown sun, fungus that stung more than it burned. A saddened school on route to children who dared to sleep on a couch exposed to their schizophrenic brother, only to wake with a new personality. One that doesn't trust as much as it used to. And wears lifejackets into romantic relationships, can't stand the touch of fingertips, damn was that marker permanent? I hope she don't press charges.

I hope they don't press no more grapes into wine because she might get drunk again and fall asleep. Rise and shine my mother used to say, pulling back the clouds of covers that warmed our night. But the fleshy shadows of that moonless night stored the venom in it's fangs to extinguish the sun.

Rise and shine, but how can I when I have crusty cloud configurations pasted to my thighs? And snow covered mountains in my memories. They peek into my daily instruction, my moments. They hide in the corners of my smile, and in the shadows of my laughter. They've stuffed my pillows with overexposed reels of ABC afterschool specials. And the feathers of woodpeckers that bore hollows into the rings of time, that now ring my eyes, and have stumped the withered trunk of who I am.

I must remember, my hands have been tied behind the back of another day. If only I could have them long enough to dig up my feet which have been planted in the soiled seeds of a harvest that only hate could reap.

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.