paper-gods

He wanders around a night-skin city,
thinking maybe he'll find his shadow-twin; long-haired, Korean-born,
somehow he made it to New York and now that part is pirate-Jack history.

But years have passed since he last played pretend with his look-a-like brother;
acting like angels dropped down from a quilted heaven,
their wings cheap Wal-Mart things strapped to their immigrant shoulder-blades.
Too many hour-glass winters, sharp summer months have gone by,
without these boys even noticing how big and jet-black
hollow the holes in their toy-soldier hearts are.

The older one swears that even though he was adopted into a world of sun;
glass-menagerie chandeliers,
he still feels terribly frozen..
Oh paper-god, where are you tonight?
That kid, now grownup but still craving answers from a muted society,
he now drinks his fair share of orange juice-vodka in the morning
before going to work, inheriting an empire.
I see him all the time; in the elevator, across the road, on the bridge
tagged with adolescent broken hearts.
But still, when I show you a picture from twelve years ago, honey-scar,
you claim that the smiling kid with haunting eyes isn't you,
that you've never seen him before in your privileged life.

Oh, stop turning the other cheek,
glancing away from my inquiring stare, as if ashamed, friend!
On the outside, I may look like a sand-paper royal,
someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth,
but, backyard angel, the truth is grimmer, as I'm sure you've guessed.
You don't know anything about what kind of hell I've been through..

Money isn't everything, I assure you.
It doesn't even promise actual security; a warm bed at night maybe,
but that doesn't mean you'll be happy,
surrounded by grandfather-clocks, gold watches, wine-roses in the garden.
Look closer, boy; where there are roses, there are thorns, sharp, reeking of snakebite.
Sun-dance star, you know that better than anyone..

But can you blame me for trying to reach out to you,
where you stand on the doorstep of a solitary tree-house?
You were the one who said we didn't make good rivals,
do you remember that in college, two years ago?
When people were cheering for us to debate blood-and-fire onstage,
dive head-first in an ice-cold Olympic pool, and even race on a mid-morning track..
My gender never mattered to you, really.
Lighthouse-glow, you saw me as your equal; fair competition by skill, not form or ego,
so maybe I should thank you for that.
But you make it so hard sometimes, flightless eagle, always so distant.

You say you're sorry but does it even matter now, night-hawk?
Our wings will never work the same as they did in the late 80s
when we were fresh out of our respective homes, starling nests.
Maybe we should try something else..
And you say, “What, run away?
Take off for Switzerland or Paris?
America's too close, girl, they'd recognize us in New York,
where we lived on opposite sides of that bourbon-laced city.
I was on the midnight-streets at just eight years old, begging strangers for cash,
and you were high up in the Empire State Building, looking down on everybody else,
wearing a promise-ring given to you by a school crush you don't even remember now."
Oh boy, I can't help but roll my eyes.
You always try to make me sound so horrible, so high-maintenance, so shallow.
Don't you know that was just a mask I put on to try to intimidate you
when I thought all you wanted was to see me fail?

“I know,” you grin, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.
“Your tiger-lily eyes had me fooled, from the very beginning.
Girl, I didn't want to even try to figure you out
and see if there was any depth, any secret charm
hiding beneath your strings of pearls and emeralds,
your annoyingly cute, unpredictable laugh.
But I was stuck, fighting something that was getting harder to ignore every day,
my affection for you, running deeper than
whether or not we had the same mixed-up, fabled childhood.”

Oh truth be told, I try to catch my breath,
but I can't when you're near, and yet, we still say that
no one has to know, like two naïve teenagers.
But can you imagine, boy, you with James Dean hair,
gesturing for me to get inside your blue cotton-candy Cadillac,
speeding away, as I hold tight to an Audrey Hepburn hat?
Oh California dreaming; that's what it sounds like to me and yet, is this only pretend?
Is it just for fun that we're doing this, sneaking around between corporate meetings,
fooling the staff of your daddy's hotel who think we're rivals?
Is it just for the thrill that you push me up against a wall,
pressing my hands on either side of my head, saying,
“If you trust me, girl, turn the light off”?

And when I do, your hands drop to my shoulders, fingers crawling across my collarbone,
skimming up and down my throat,
as though you're trying to find the weakest link,
the softest spot in my entire body.
But starting off so slow, you're the clever one here.
Yeah, don't make me sound like a vampire when
you're the one tattooing flowers onto my skin, sucking all of my self-control.

“You can leave anytime,” you say.
And I know, boy, your grip isn't too tight.
But we have to compromise in the dark, without words.
You have the upper-hand, when it comes to
knowing your way around a shadow-world;
all jagged edges, glass everywhere, sharp eyes of tail-less animals.
And I trust you, though I shouldn't, but it didn't happen overnight.

No, at first, you were the enemy,
the person standing in the way of my inheritance.
Yet, here we are, both outcasts because we dropped our masks
in the garden between the grove of plum trees,
Manila paper-petals, yesterday's grins.
And now everyone knows how vulnerable, how tragically human we are.

So, honey-scar, why not just take the night and run with it?
Boy, why not go all the way with me, when we're already
on a train heading south towards nowhere, past city lights,
blinding, and a mountainside cold-front?
If we get lost, at least this time, we won't be alone,
wandering separately through a deranged sleepwalker's 5 AM tunnel.

“Yeah, I can tell that you already know me,”
you whisper hoarsely, as though you're unsure,
as my hands circle your shoulders, slowly and carefully slide down your spine,
trace the bottle-cap bruises, mostly-faded bite-marks.
And I respond as we move closer and the springs in the bed creak,
the clock ticks in the hallway, like
the perfect moment-of-truth in a southwestern crime flick.

Boy, you can be the in-between character; in-between
the chalk-white moon and orange-peel sun, good and evil, red-eye, blue-eye, plum.
I can be the mysterious one; the character no one saw coming with a shotgun.
Yeah, I can defend you, even though I'm small.
I can face your demons, even though I don't know them,
even though, I'm just as terrified as you are.
And you smile, thinking maybe I'm not cut out for this action-drama.
But I can't just leave you here in this bone-yard in the dark,
wandering lost, fighting off nightmares all on your own.

No, we started off enemies, fell in love midway,
and now, we'll finish this race together here.
So, give me the past and wrap it up in jasmine.
Stick it in a drawer under all your rainy-day sweaters.
We can look at it again when we're old and frail but happy;
drinking green tea, rocking back and forth on a porch-swing.
Yeah, we can open that drawer, pull out those memories,
when we've got nothing left to lose, no more battles to fight in,
nowhere left to explore but a bright paradise ahead, (maybe, perhaps).

“You're a dreamer,” you say, smiling in the crook between my neck and shoulder.
“Yeah,” I say, staring up at the ceiling, at the painted angels,
at the fake heaven that you thought was real, when you were little.
When you first moved here, amber-king;
you opened those almond-shaped eyes of yours, thought you had died young.
But now, you breathe evenly, smiling, relaxed but fearless;
you no longer cringe in the silver light of morning.

No, now you drink it all in, like star-burst orange juice.
Rising like a skyscraper, shadow-people no longer creep across your periphery,
startle your toy-soldier heart into beating,
like a wicked and haunted train-engine.
Unlike a paper-god, hanging in the doorway;
all traditional red-ribbon, unfinished prayers,
you're unmistakably alive now, here, with no cursed script,
with no one to ever toss you out into the vintage rain.