With your mighty sting
And your body small but toxic
Like death itself
Little Scorpion,
Are you happy?

With your soft exoskeleton
And your blood that runs like fire,
Burning like Troy and the libraries of Alexandria,
Little Scorpion,
Are you happy?

Have the sands of the desert,
Ardent like the forge of Prometheus,
Burned your legs
And waged wars with your claws?

Have the dunes
Consumed you yet?

Little Scorpion,
Are you happy?

Do I know myself?
This girl with her doe eyes
And blonde hair;
She might have a lot going on.
Otherwise, she might be a liar--
After all this time,
Still convinced she’s never committed
A crime against another person’s heart.
Who really knows
What damage a girl has done?
She doesn’t even remember.
She takes everyone’s word for it,
And the whole world says
There’s nothing wrong.

Those eyes,
They are baby blues
That sing the blues.
Boy, does she look sad.
Not a week goes by
That she doesn’t waste by counting
The number of eyelashes
That fall out of her little head--
Two at a time
Yet as gradually as running out of time.
At night she pleads for excitement
That doesn’t entail
That deer-in-the-headlights feeling.

Repulsion
Has a funny way of creeping up.
It’s like there are two magnets,
And she is both.
The “wrong” side of one magnet
Yearns for the “wrong” side
Of the other magnet,
Yet they push each other away.
Likewise, she pushes herself apart.

She’s also learned that
Stuff you’re afraid to do
Happens anyway,
Like the “right” side of the magnet
Sticking to the aforementioned “wrong” side
Of the other magnet.
Things come together
When you do as you please--
It feels so wrong to let opposites attract,
But it is oh-so-right.
She needs to realize
she is not Jekyll and Hyde.

Wrongness is relative anyway--
Those eyes may seem too dark
Or too green
Or too gray
To a different person--
As for me, how I love them so.

When she bats her lashes
I can only imagine
They sound like a bat’s wings;
A rush of air beneath
Every rise and fall,
Heard only by the keenest ears.
But this memory doesn’t have
the same power as an act of self-loathing
Nor that deer-in-the-headlights feeling.
In my reflection,
She bats her lashes
but I still drown in hatred
For those stupid, doe eyes.

My heart has built a factory
Whose main exports are
Fallacies that have a dreadful way
Of creeping up
Behind my every thought and word,
Their paws locked in the snow,
Poised for a one-on-one battle
With Sanity.

I look in the mirror and think,
Boy, does she look angry.
Not a year goes by
Without some sort of inner vandalism.
She joins a stampede,
Runs without stopping
By the river to drink.
It tramples every blade of love left in her.
It crashes every flower she grows
So that she will never see
The beauty she bestows upon the world.
When she finally does stop by the river to drink,
And the bucks continue to run through it,
Her reflection is distorted.
The doe doesn’t wait for the water to
Become still again.

I call her Jane Doe
Because she doesn’t remember who she is,
And because her doe eyes
Are the only thing about her
That isn’t like a blank canvas.
Sometimes when she looks at me
I can only see my reflection;
We become one as we are meant to be.
I paint my body with compliments.
I can see myself
Draw lines across my skin.
There was a time when I pressed too hard
And the lines scabbed over.

But I am forgiven,
Because wrongness is relative
And when I envision myself,
This is what I wish I could see:
A mix of positive and negative,
Both sides of the magnet--
Never repelling each other,
Attracting one another--
A field of anger, of blues
Of lashes and bats’ wings
Of one-on-one battles
Of scabs, of humor,
Of crime against the heart,
Of no more time left to restart
Of irregular rhyme-schemes
And unfamiliarity

I don’t know myself,
This girl with her doe eyes--
This girl with her green eyes--
Or are they blue?
Or gray?
Or black?
Or brown?
I bat my lashes and I drown.