Dulces Desvarios

X:After Persephone ran an all-girls school open to all sacrilegious princesses presently located in the San Fernando Valley– the pheromones on campus as bountiful as Aquanet before a first date– each of us purred for her respective religion, electric-strung to the hands of our throats. It wasn’t my first time, far past breaking the entr’acte from a hypersonic sixth grade meeting of lips underneath punk denim and cerise netting. We have to tell the other girls now: our gold cage has no more room. They do not belong here, the atmosphere is all ours: hearts of ink waltzing over lizard tongues, the smack of mulberry cream. XX: & so with a laconic strut I faulted sweetly into the 7AM brilliance of Sunset Boulevard & for once palm trees outshone skyscrapers, the voltaic ruby W, even God’s bottle of Patron where God doesn’t exist & what if she did? we’d still suck suck suck the marrow from our cigarettes like we knew better than to quit so young, & send our smoke off into the aimless sky with a kiss of bitter lipstick.XXX: Tourists, you can only dream up the length of legs stretched out longer than Ventura Blvd. Tourists: Call us what you wish, but we belong here more than you ever will. The sun that burns you gives us life. See your face? You smile like beauty queens who just lost, who are being showered with someone else’s confetti. Why do you try to hold back tears, to hear anything above the screaming? There is only silence as the other girl gets the tiara, its own expensive apparatus of wand-high Swarovski crystals. You can hear the beep and clunk of 90s dial-up as it coyly slinks from its satin fortress to crown her brunette curls. What a bitch, you paid so much for this dress. You knew water-proof mascara was a cruel Valentines joke, but not a treasure saved for such telegenic blue lighting. The music is corny Americano, past your hours and fair-weather friends. Relatives are saying let’s go home. They always laughed when you tried to toddle back to reality, back and forth with the blacksmith’s daughter. Now you can eat a hamburger with extra everything in it, with enough grease to shine each goddamn acrylic nail. Published December 11th, 2019 by Expat Press.