Traces

I want to run away from here. Trailing dust in a 1967 Ford Mustang and blowing smoke from rich red lips. I want to stay in motel rooms all over the country; shooting morphine and talking about life. I want your hands on my shoulders as we lay on bad 80’s coverlets staring at stucco ceilings and speaking in opiate induced confusion. I want to feel connected and in love; if only for the moment. I want to watch the sun come up while sipping cheap red wine and sitting wrapped in a blanket, buried in your arms and suspended in a balcony overlooking an abandoned pool. I want to toss and turn in cocaine-sleep knowing that if I give up on closed eyes and fractured dreams you’ll be there to talk to. I want to wear frilly dresses in every color and rob convenience stores with pearls around my neck. I want red lips, white nails and Marilyn Monroe hair in pale pink. My eyes will always be blackened with kohl and sleep deprivation. I want to remember the days when everything was okay and your kiss meant “I love you,” without ever saying it. I want to turn you into an addict; scarffing down pills and powders with just as much voracity as me. I want your warmth next to me. I want to be willing to sleep nights again. Your embrace was the best rest I’ve ever had.

If we ran away I’d sit cutting out paper dolls and tracing their outlines on old news paper clippings about dead stars. We’d draw tracks on every single one with ballpoint pens. We’d have hollow music playing in the background and cut lines on old mirrors with cigarettes dangling precariously from lips smeared with kisses. Each night would be the start of our days as we’d hunt the streets in search of that next big score. Crack dens, laden with deceit and failed dreams, are already our biggest hang-outs. It’s like being a kid in a candy store when you have a wallet full of twenties and pills of every prowess spread in front of you. You know so little but I’ll teach what color will make it all okay. A vodka bottle would be permanently attached to my finger tips in all these late night runs. From child to drug chugging thug and back again; I’d flow.

I plan on wearing your oversized sweaters; being lost in the wool would feel fabulous. We can speed down the highways passing signs that say things like ‘16 miles til…’ and ‘Exit for…ahead’. I can be the most beautiful accessory bedded down next to you in the leather seats. I’ll smoke trashy cigarettes and talk about sex and drugs with a dirty mouth and foul fantasies. We’ll pass out at rest stops when we run out of blow and listen to Elliot Smith as we fade into sleep. You’ll wrap your arms tight around me and lean your lips close to my ear, “don’t go down, stay with me, baby, stay,” is all you’d say and then kiss my forehead in that way that you always do. I’d wear fur coats and forget that we’d have had sex, repeatedly. You’d remind me, kiss my cheek, but never correct me. Let me believe what I want; let me fantasize that you’d have said you loved me. Maybe at the end of it all we’d be laying in the middle of the road, outlined in chalk. Oh, how we reflect our music and our times.