Ashley Green: "Youth"

Youth

I.
We’d pass secrets to one another.
 
Hide them behind crooked teeth,
chew on them for hours until our jaws hung slack,
or swallow them whole and cradle the ache
in the pit of our stomachs,
but never once did we let them fall from our mouths. 
 
Our smiles made up of rotten truths,
our insides coated with horror,
our blood thick with each other. 
 
II.
I dipped my legs in tar.
 
Left skin and bone behind,
waded through thick waters,
until I was waist high in Death. 
 
She watched from the shore,
knees bare and pink
beneath the hem of a mourning dress,
and claimed she could not swim. 
 
III.
Her voice compressed.
 
A new tone, tangy and untrue,
rolled off her tongue and hung heavy
between us. 
 
I sifted through the sound,
searched for a familiar note, 
but all I gathered was goodbye
in splintered octaves. 
 
IV.
Our scars no longer matched. 
 
The ways in which I was torn and sewn
appeared slipshod compared to her                                                                                        
silver threads of tidy burden,
and so we both made the mistake
of thinking the other too weak – 
 
she with her secrets hidden
and mine so brazenly shown.
 

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Ashley is Southern California based writer, poet, and general weirdo with pieces in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rabid Oak, and Sunday Mornings at the River, among others. Find her on Instagram @amoderncrone.