true crime and i broke up but he won't stop calling me
Alisha Tan
you are not searching for love!
you are searching for a buzz, a little god,
fifty million dollar bounty on her head, and you’ll be the one to kill her.
anytime, anywhere, the possibility of a good-time-gone-girl is waiting to be found.
hung between hot-blooded hours in the heart of the woods or
sweat-dyed sweetie splayed out on the highway, flesh aged in a basement,
blood drained out in a bathtub, or skin shelled into the street.
smoke her like a pipe dream - someone
squeezed her neck like grapes and sipped dregs of her breath,
or rolled her into thrift-store sheets like a half-smoked joint
and stomped her out before the embers hit the stars.
same spirits, different bodies -
mellow and smooth, strained through her doorframe
and downed without a shout.
or maybe this one’s got a little kick, claw marks tattooing her skin,
spine snapped like a question mark,
jawbones whining like door hinges, cracked ajar so the vultures can
come home. pearly-white pageant queen or paper-thin pill popper,
put your mouth to her bruise-burnt lips and believe she would’ve kissed back.
coroner’s cocktail: you pilfered graves before it was cool,
trawled through her room and found
a diploma to mark the graduation from girl to responsibility,
dollar store rhinestones chipped like her front teeth,
pearlescent dresses sewn from taffeta and velvet and sorrow,
leather-bound journals yawning wide enough to fall into,
love letters and lead-laced diary entries,
snake-forked tongue and acid pens,
dust-molting trophies and sun-faded photos,
a bulletin board with enough space to tack yourself onto.
pop her skull off and shake it up like a gin martini -
you can’t get hungover if you always stay drunk.
you get to piece her together, make it fatal or destiny,
a porcelain chalice of disposable fingernails and unrealized futures,
your leaking little anomaly. you never liked her ‘til she was blue.
you never wanted her ‘til she was dead.