diffrent takes - an old piece i should have forgotten about :>

"We have the same hands" stuttered out of my mouth and onto the floor. My hands crept around my focal point and I sought him to be the type to kill. He was 11, fragile, hurting, and very alone. He happened to be a boy growing up in a shrinking world. He was made to be the type to kill. Bugs, bats, caterpillars, or my toy dolls. He smashed oranges and bee nests. Crumpled paper planes and loved so hard he couldn't stand the sound of static, placed between him and his father's phone calls. I sought him to be the type to kill. The media made him out to be a real monster.

If my mother would have stepped into my puddle of incompetent metaphors. Shed sweep it up, she was always doing things like that. Every issue, every problem shed shimmy into a dustpan and chucked it straight out the door. Collecting the broken bee wings and melted Polly pockets. I sit there shocked by her inability to step in. But she did what most southern women typically do, and she went south. 

“We have the same blood”, this phrase always seemed to soak itself in every whiskey-ridden syllable, with the southern accents ringing behind. It felt like a long car ride, it felt like when I realized fireflies don't come to my town anymore. I was born improperly, the daughter of a Frat/Narscar/Basketball coke head king of the goddamn South. He was a type of romcom that cheerleaders gagged over. He was my mother's, only love. We use to be cool. My mother made him out to be a real monster. 

If my brother saw the mud pies I make today, I think he'd remember the docks. The moldy wood and when the catfish swarmed our childhood Christmas tree. Tied by its stump. I swear it was plastic, I swear we were church-acquired hicks. True Catholics. I knew that church that boy shot up-Anyways he was 10, my brother was stuck on the diving board across the dock in this giant swampy mass called Lake Norman. This lake was the largest man-made lake located in North Carolina. He wasn't the type to kill, that was the problem. Faced with true danger and impeccable speed he was challenged to outrace a water snake. A vicious, unfaithful, gluttonous beast. He did what most people would do, he sat and cried. 

20 years of hair.

I've decided I don't want this, this glorified depressing romantic life. I stopped doing what was best and stopped looking at the floor. I always hated looking up. Said to be holy but I've seen nothing but defeat. 

I can feel my hair stick to my back, I write a lot more about this- in private of course. 

I can feel my hair fall past my shoulders and the memories feel somewhat grand. Like I've been let into a ritual I finally comprehend. Before, a time like this, id cut all inches off and watch them sept into the floor. I'd decorate myself in some closeted-vintage costume couture. I assumed there was strength in confidence so leather and lethal, to know I was looking at true beauty, to know I could take that thing away. 

to feel my hair lay layered and outgrown upon my back.

to feel it fall off and crack.

In church, they talk about evil and I watch my brother compare women to apples. to temptation, to sin, to the quiet girl who sits upon the boardwalk, between the steples, in the alley, across the street. I trace my hand with my fingers and try to remember that taste. If sin was created because of a bite, mine must have been in the summer, when momma's sunbathing hat blocked my site and my brothers and I ran wild through the orchards, skipping stones and making mud pies. back when the air stuck to ur skin like a good woman's kiss. That must have been it? that must have been back when my hair first grew long enough to lay upon my back. at least before the first major cut.

I can feel my hair sticking to my back and I tried to remind myself women are not apples. 

-cut-

The next time he saw me he laughed at how he could now fit all of it in his hand, how it tangled into mountable shape upon my head. I thought he'd hate it. I thought it would free him from sin. I thought this was a tangible curse. I thought I was the only one lethal to know I still lay underneath these strands. 

I can still feel my hair brushing the back of my neck at this point. 

Outside the gas station, sipping on a supersized American-style pop. I won't tell you what we talked about because that wouldn't be fair. I pushed him off of me n readjusted my socks, shoes, and shorts as I often did when we talked. I pulled the strands ever so carefully out of those fraying jeans and we both kinda just squinted at each other through the blazing sun. 

I carry a lot of old wives' tales in my pocket like a gun. and he must have known this one well. he seemed relieved when I told him I only cut off the bad. He pulled on my hair one last time and I rolled the windows down completely. 

I can feel my hair stick to my back, I write a lot more about this because I don't want this glorified romantic depressing life because I can't keep trimming my hair and cutting my ends in protest to this idea that relation is only due to beauty and beauty is only the creation of deception. There is so much more I seek than misfits and miscalculated conversations about Adam and Eve. There's so much more I want to tell you about my growth when I tell you:

I can feel my hair stick to my back

xoxo 

papercut kneecaps