Delilah Jones

February 13, 2012

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This is the story of a life interrupted. A story half begun- ended.

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Delilah Jones was seventeen-

breaking rules like basement windows,

just to get a glimpse of the outside.

She liked to stroll the streets at night

with boys who liked smashing pumpkins

and her friend who was her friend and not

her decoy.

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Delilah Jones was the daughter

of a lost and wasted past, the mother

of inconstancies. She would pluck weeds

by the stems to behead the flower. And like them

she was a headless weed, ugly and dried out

in the sweet summer sun.

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When it snowed, she walked the streets

with those people she could at least handle,

and fat snowflakes would hang trapped in the air

above her, a fly stuck on the gossamer line that

travelled between the streetlamp and her nose.

Snowfights at night, running away when she

wasn't supposed to. Thinking the fog in the

fields at night were so -fucking- gorgeous,

and she would pluck these memories like

fresh plums. Storing them away in the cellar

of her mind, for better days. For when

the proverbial shit hits the

not so proverbial fan.

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Her friends called her Lilah-

and they called her niceties, but mostly

they just talked about the things that were

soft. Things that could not hurt a child because

she hadn't decided to grow up yet. So she didn't.

They talked of things like laughs, like

boys and games and silly jokes.

And the swing sets, the walks, the things that

pulled her away from the darkness she'd constantly

bathed in.

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Her distractions were beautiful.

Her happiness was short lived and a

double-edged knife. The thinned blade

wore down on her for so long and so much

that Lilah became a thread, cut shorter and shorter

every moment. "Miss Jones, this is not how a young lady

should act." And she said okay.

And the bonfires-smoke breaks-winter walks-snowfights-

were gone. They disappeared one day.

Smoke from a crushed cigarette.

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"Learn to grow up, Lilah."

Your future is two steps away-

make a fucking decision- make some

fucking choices and do something useful with

your life. Bent cardboard smiles and melted

candlewax obedience. It did not dissolve this time

because of the steel carcass- the mammoth's ribcage

that had been implemented to cut her down,

leave her safe inside.

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Safe inside and emaciated, Lilah lay.

With her friendless habitation, her empty hollow

walls that echoed as the only conversation.

Lilah never got the last word. She never got

to make her own choices without being shoved

this way and that. Adapt, adapt or else die.

Lilah adapts.

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Fake smiles and take importance in

the shallow. Make good with old

mannequins who love to speak of

gossip

and sex

and giving up on carefree happiness

for insecurity and over interest in

the things that don't matter.

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She tried to care about their days-

about the people they meet,

the dull parties she faked good with.

The inconsistencies of her patience and her

worn out, jaded, ground down excuses

But

she can't stand to see their faces.

Lilah liked to retreat into quicksand baths-

she liked to think as the granules attached to

the tiny tissues of her lungs.

The bits of sand yell "Al! Alveolar sac!"

Like old acquaintances, they tore the

hollow tissue.

.

But, Miss Jones never thought she'd need the oxygen

exchange anyways. She said "fuck that."

Not because she did not care, but because

she did not want to care

anymore.

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To meet Lilah now

you find a mannequin who

finds it hard to love-

finds it strange to want

to be near people.

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Lilah's made some mistakes now,

took some pills that weren't bitter in taste,

snuck some secrets out the window,

but now she just lays wasted, a listless,

mindless thing, a sloth hanging.

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With cold demeanour,

and withdrawn eyes,

she will not look you in the pupils,

will not talk with you for too long,

because she's afraid she'll hate the one

behind those eyes.

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And she is tired of hating.