With Age Comes

We used to fight, fists raised.
We used to fight like boys.
But the rumble of bones splitting creases into her door
Was too big for us.
Her twin bed cradled our feet,
Bare as his broad shoulders.
The television buzzed
And the sheetrock errupted with cries
Passed down from knuckle to tongue
To our feble bodies, nesting in the next room.

 

She was my age. Young. But much older in that sort of thing.
She didn't even blink.
I envied her for a long time.
She wore a bra. And shaved her legs.
And knew how to flirt with her eyes like in the movies.
I had freckles and teeth straying from straight.
We were so different yet so dependent on one another.
She was Venus. And I was Botticelli.
And when we faught. Like boys.
She always won.

 

That day her door cracked like firewood,
Broken by a stranger colored as sugar skulls.
Reds and yellows and purples
Stemming from her cheekbones
Tracing her nose.
As the walls popped like cartilage.
She didn't even blink.

Author's Note

I'm not sure about this one

Reviews

[I C S Clark-Hogg]

This is a very interesting piece of descriptive writing.

[John A Common]

Very cool stuff. Your masterfull use of the english language is amazing. This one is going to my favorite's list. Just perfect.

[raining]

Like especially the last stanza.
Have you ever read surrealist Arther Rimbaud? French, 19th century, especially the poem "the drunken boat" ?

your way of combining the image-words and making them work is a real gift. colored as sugar skulls in the stanza with the "reds and yellows and purples" and "popped like cartiladge" all combine to give the bare picture...they should not go together but they do. you lift off the page, context-wise, raise the reader up as it were
hard to explain that... if you were to use too much of the off-images it would be too crooked, but you seem to have a handle on that.
sheet rock erupted.... goes with the context of punching, the erupting... because the reader knows and feels the feeling of punching sheet rock...so that which shouldnt work does with you, and quite well in fact.
anyway, alot goes on in the poem. read some rimbaud
i hope i make sense, thanks raining, keith martell (all man woman and child of me)