You were
the budding boy, with a feverish, hungry heart,
and I your flower girl, my petals
parts of me for you to chart.
Eloquently you presented my cartography to me,
outlined the cities that were meant for traveling –
Oxycontin, Serotonin, and lovely Dopamine.
we ventured ‘til our junkie hearts could burst.
When empty, we threw our needles to the petal pile,
a bed we thought was fit for sleep.
yet when we laid down, it was bittersweet,
the pangs of love that jabbed our back like
The syringe’s last
heartbeat,
the flower of youth that faded
in the heat.
The Lipstick Years
I delight in dead skin on my lips.
in shedding translucent, decaying layers
until it is as though we never kissed.
a different colour tomorrow,
a new shade for a new phase.
there was the sun kissed brown of then,
there is the dark purple plum of now.
the classic, bold red of the future.
I transform out of you & into
any colour I like, reveling in
the lipstick years
(a new mask
to makeup for the
tears)
Jillian-Rae Picco is an author, editor, and advocate based in Northern Ontario. She has an Honours Undergraduate Degree with Distinction in English Studies, and her first creative nonfiction book, Canoeing with the Seasons, was recently published. Her poetry and nonfiction writings have been published through nearly a dozen literary platforms and magazines, including Introvert, Dear, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Spare Parts Literary. Her second novel, The Insightful Journey, is forthcoming publication in July 2023 through Thrive: Enabling Potential. You can find her Literary Magazine on Instagram @chemicalinevitable.
