Kaleidoscopes

formed around the inner rims of my pupils

the moment you touched me

playing back images of your mouth

and projecting them as scenes

from a horror movie

Something like the one you played onto a dirty bed sheet

one stripped from my mattress and slain

onto your garage

The horror movie was an excuse

to hold me as tightly as you wanted

And you held me tighter than I wanted

said you were protecting me from the monsters

But the ghosts under my bed hadn't come out

until you ripped off their sheets

They hadn't reached for me

until they felt your figure on my mattress

Kaleidoscopes

in your cinematic smile

turned your threats into compliments

Turned me counterclockwise

as you held me up to your eyes,

Turned me until I could only think

in geometric patterns

You held me so tightly that I went numb to everything

but the feeling of falling crystals in a

Kaleidoscope falling like I had fallen under the cloud of exhaust as you slammed the car door

Like I had fallen after you told me you couldn't lose me and spun the wheel counterclockwise After you accelerated under a bridge

but on the other side I found

Kaleidoscopes colliding with glass

Scattering the shards of crystal

Highlighting my bruises

my gashes

your frozen sneer

Kaleidoscopes on the rims of my dilated pupils

had twisted your actions before they reached my brain

Made me forget I was just your passenger

While you drank my tears from a flask

But the smashed car on the highway

Was a shattered kaleidoscope

I saw straight yellow lines and traced them

Away from the wreckage

The confusion

The monsters

From the red sheet ghost on the road

From the exhaust

The horror movie

But you were the horror movie

And your hands

Gripping the steering wheel

Cannot turn me.

She matured early.

She felt the gears in her brain

turn faster than her classmates’

Felt an inferno run fiercely through her veins

before they could light a single spark

She pulsed with electricity.

She learned to hold a paintbrush

and promptly created a masterpiece

Made a map of the ocean

with her eyes closed.

But knowing the ocean so early

made swimming seem slow

By age 9 she had memorized

every starfish and seahorse beneath the waves

and now her nerves quiver

as she feels her classmates gaining on her fins

She wills the electricity to coarse faster through her

and searches for new parts of the ocean to map.

Maturation has kept her swimming strongly

but her flotation device is losing air

Soon the school of fish will reach her

and pierce the water beside her

Together they will follow the current

she has always felt

in her veins.