At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant, my fingernails chewed to half-moons. I took off my clothes in a late March field. I had secret car wrecks, secret hysteria. I opened my mouth to swallow stars. In backseats I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust, and distance. I was unformed and total. I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops stopped coming around. The heat lifted its palms. The radio lost some teeth.
Now I see the landscape behind me as through a Claude glass—tinted deeper, framed just so, bits of gilt edging the best parts. I see my unlined face, a thousand film stars behind the eyes. I was every murderess, every whip-thin alcoholic, every heroine with the silver tongue. Always young Paul Newman’s best girl. Always a lightning sky behind each kiss.
Some days I watch myselfin the third person, speak to her in the second. I say: I will meet you in sleep. I will know you by your stillness and your shaking. By your second-hand gown. By your bruises left by mouthssince forgotten. This is notan elegy because I cannot bear for it to be. It is only a tree branch against the window. It is only a cherry tomato slowly reddening in the garden. I will put it in my mouth. It will be sweet, and you will swallow. - Catherine Pierce
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