cicada shells Madeline Ragsdale

cicada shells

Madeline Ragsdale

it was the summer of screaming and little bodies piled up in the streets or the outlines of bodies, or sleeves, shed in the name of growth how delicate they crunched under little children’s little shoes trudging through gutters lined with the refuse of reincarnation, still perfectly curled in fetal position, eyes empty, abdomen, clinging claws and you plucked them up ecstatic brought them home to your mother, who shuddered in her green kitchen but let you keep them anyway

it wasn’t the summer she was dying and I think the cats still lived or maybe your father dug a hole in the backyard while you cried in confusion and pet dead flesh the air was sugary light on skin, you wore it over baggy t-shirts, over baggy shorts over early bleeding, over newly feathered legs and they called you a tomboy, despite all your hair at the doctor’s office shoeless back pressed against the wall the nurse said you’d never grow taller: god made you this way at those words your body wrapped tight around you, all hope of metamorphosis lost

this is where I leave you, my uneasy exoskeleton of baby fat

you weren’t wild by nature but wild by want wild by infection, the things you did you’d never do alone during that summer of caged freedom where nothing mattered at all, at all, and nothing screamed in the trees smoke filled the honda, do you remember how it clung to your hair and clothes for days the way she dragged her cigarette, held between pointer and thumb how blue poured from his mouth caught in afternoon sunlight and everyone thought they were in love you thought you were a witch back then or maybe the summer before and laid curses on those that undertipped you while waitressing wishing them red lights, parking tickets, sprained ankles little bits of bad luck you wore a 1940s style uniform, stockings, slip resistant shoes when you quit you threw your uniform into the depths of the closet to rot, I could still find it maybe, if I looked that summer hung heavy on you, dripped off your bones gathered thick on the belly and hips, shivered in an attempted molt you split yourself sternum to groin willing from your stomach a body seething longer, thinner, new

this is where I leave you, crawling gory half in half out of the mess

the neon light devoured skin paper thin and crackling caught in strobe

you froze again, again, zoopraxiscope of a girl writhing in frantic motion as each captured flash of form trailed behind you into the empty club’s glittering void I imagine them suspended there still, like shells of cicadas long gone in the lost dimensions of nighttime where everything shimmers pearlescent you spilled your guts on bathroom floors as an offering to slack-eyed girls with half familiar faces whose names all sounded alike, who traded you stranger’s secrets in place of their own and said they liked your hair

in silk slips, in short skirts, in black tights, in knit sweaters you were a paper doll peeling at the edges and stained from spilled drinks, spotted in burn marks do you remember red wine vomit curling up your stomach while you rode the bus at seven in the morning away from the blissfully unretained you thought you could throw yourself up regurgitate an ectoplasmic ball of unworthy insides to flush away, forgotten

this is where I leave you, a wriggling butterfly pinned alive

it was the summer the apartment was trying to eat you, it had teeth sprouted from the ceiling

it had jaws slowly descending, inch by inch, day by day and there was no leaving gray walls, gray carpets pungent with dust mold grew from our skin as fur does dusky purple mottled, you looked so beastly scowling at yourself in the bathroom mirror all dolled up with nowhere to go

but crazy crazy grimy ghostly going out of your gourd, what madness I remember, an endless warehouse maze of abandoned boys in black behind closed doors filling the air with razored sound, a room blue with smoke, and the girls were laughing and the girls were bleaching their hair and the girls were singing on the roof the house was hot with all our exhalations and somewhere in their buzzing breathing you found euphoria, the time to weep

this is where I leave you, my tear-soaked remnants of slough

across the street the letters read U REMO FOOD MARKET flickering red and green light into our bedroom, my bedroom, yours and mixed amid the sound of the city sighing you hear it, so faint that strange familiar song that slips inside our bone marrow, sibiliating, our skull, collapsing

how shall I slip you off, or you slip me, or must I come crawling up your throat, like a disgruntled parasite too fat for her host to feed skin stretching, skin splitting, skin shucking off you wished to wait for warmth, but I had other plans and somehow here beneath snow the steady undulating chirp begins to build

do you hear the cicadas calling? it is molting season, and you’ve felt this before

this is where I leave you.