I will wake up soon.

Glitter coats her eyelids like a thin layer of ice,
while her lips are doused in fiery paint,
and she is beauty if I’ve ever known it.

Shadowy irises like a room without windows and lights,
there is no glimmer of hope lying there.

I’ve never tasted the fleetness of her tongue,
the basked-in lightness of her mouth,
but I have seen the gossamer mysteries of her words.

I will never touch the toxic veil of her skin,
and never keep less than one breath of distance,
for she will disappear.

Sweet Nevermore,
what would I do without you as my muse?

Yours is a waltz,
plunging deathly into pits of writhing bodies,
each torn asunder by their own ecstasies.

Yours is no more a swagger than a prance,
something resting between a slink and strut,
with your hips not as much swaying as snapping—
snapping like the branches of a weeping willow.

Her grace resides in the way she smokes her cigarettes,
with her wrist unkempt and crooked,
while she compulsively taps the ashes away.

Hands bejeweled by heavy rings with hollow faces,
she sprinkles a little more glitter on the mirror,
just every once in a while.

Encircled by celluloid footprints of her platform heels,
she fakes sleeping uneasily in a patchwork fur quilt,
sewn together from the body of many beasts.

Her hair is like the lifelong work of a sable silkworm,
woven from the bloody black heart itself.

She moves with energy that cannot be contained,
with the sun’s light and the moon’s reflection,
with her head held high and her hands flexing.

Those fingers belong to an artist,
like a name belongs to whomever it is given,
like a gift from God.

Creations of fur,
silk,
and leather all line her closet as if needed.

Corsets,
bolero jackets,
ankle boots,
cloaks,
petticoats,
top hats,
and anything else she has found.

Dressed-up in her filth,
she is a forgotten doll,
someone else’s plaything.

Underneath the grime,
she is my muse.

With a twist of her heel,
the cigarette is out.

With a curl of her lips,
the audience gasps.

With a twirl of her hands,
she is on top.

With legs stretched as towers wrapped in fishnets,
she curls around the microphone and screams,
her blood flying in tiny droplets onto many faces.

Those faces…
all open and gasping for air,
for an ounce of recognition in her eyes.

She snarls and her teeth are sallow,
biting into the air as she weaves her dreams.

I hold out my hands and she spits in my mouth.