My White Skirt Poem by Delilah Miller

'Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.'
-Henry David Thoreau


See this white skirt?
I won't worry
as long as this skirt
swishes at my smooth knees,
rippling and laughing,
like a bright and silent flirt.
You're going to cut your pinkie,
as always,
you're never alert.

I won't think of consequences, piling up,
dirtying me like mud caking.
Treat me like a princess,
or like a sheet set,
but my life is a big mess
and you don't have a big enough net
for me
to believe
you won't leave me hanging, forsaken.

Your calloused fingers slide down the chords.
The guitar, then our lips, a final squeeze.
You sweat and quake;
I hold you at the end of an invisible sword.
But the room is rearranging,
but I'm not hoping.
Not yet.
I am
shaken,
not ready to be forsaken.

The next step means either hating you or faking.
That bleeding finger
spouts on my skirt. then skin
and it's dark red like sin!
I'm still shaking,
this was just a daydream I was remaking
and I'm shaken
unwilling to be swept off, to be taken.
It makes me shiver cold,
and I want to put up a hand,
end the nightmare,
or put you on ice, on hold,
instead of hearing an echo of a heart breaking...