Maybe Crimes

How different i know you would act,
if you saw how they lined my chest with yellow tape 
after you left it,
how they outlined my remains with child’s chalk,
the kind i used to draw horses with,
pink, and blue, and purple across the pavement,
because i was too pure and too young to be told horses couldn’t be that color,
but you were the rain,
that came down like punches and slanted eyes,
and swirled it like cotton candy,
so that I thought you were good,
until it turned to red and I realized it was my blood.
Maybe you would act different if you saw the crime scene,
if you saw a documentarist cock his head at the strangely terrifying and beautiful way,
that blood clouded around the back of my head on the sidewalk,
where I used to draw my horses,
like a thought bubble in a comic strip,
as if I had something to say. 
Maybe if you saw the way that they pour water over the blood,
until it turned pink,
like a smeared chalk horse caught in the rain,
then the bleach, scrubbing any sign that I was there away,
that I died, that you broke me. 
Maybe, you would’ve done things differently if you saw how the crime scene would be,
before the crime,
and how, tomorrow, 
the little girl who lives in the house across the street,
will come over and draw a horse with pink chalk over me. 

-anna sluder

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