Friday, July 31, 2009/Saturday, August 1, 2009
BREATHE IN SOME VIOLET
By Philip Cairns
Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns
I used to play with dolls when I was a little boy.
They’re so sweet and colourful.
Lovely frilly clothes.
The kids laughed at me because of that.
“Philip should have been a girl,” they always said.
No thank you.
Who wants to worry about getting pregnant and having a period every month?
I’d rather just do occasional drag.
The best of both worlds.
Gulp down all the pills.
They’ll kill you and then no one will jeer, anymore.
I was only 13.
Thirteen and over-dosing!!
Can you believe it?!
My tummy full of aspirins,
Wondering what death would be like.
Scared.
Vomiting against my will.
Crying.
Carolyn coming down to see what was up.
Mom yelling because she’d been woken up.
That bitch always wanted to control everything.
He lived.
Another stomach full of pills when I was 21.
Plus LSD and a bottle of wine and a house plant.
Knocked it on the floor, you see.
Broke the deep green glass it was in,
Tumbling from the top of the toilet tank.
Mom mustn’t know.
So I ate the long, winding shoot with shiny emerald leaves
To get rid of the nasty evidence.
Blame it on the acid!
Oh, to grow up with confidence and acceptance.
Unconditional love and popularity.
Turning into a shamrock with anger and envy.
Ambulance meeting me around the corner
After calling a Suicide hotline.
To the hospital.
Puking in a bucket.
I’m alive.
Forget about these things.
“You’re not in high school, anymore,” a pretty strawberry blond guy once said to me,
Not so long ago.
The past colours the present.
Give me less blue and more yellow.
Give me same-sex parents and my own private island.
Purple morphs into mauve
Which becomes violet that turns into pale dusty pink.
The sunset is visible from my concrete balcony.
Every colour lilts into another.
The past imbues the present, as well.
Life goes on, no matter what happened before.
Breathe in every shade of experience.
Who wants to hear a sob story?
Yes, I’m still alive.
Dolls are so beautiful.
One stands regally gowned on a bookcase in my bachelor apartment.
Go ahead and laugh.
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