Lipstick

That's the lipstick that can't fade when you wake yourself up
you've been talking in your sleep and the worst part is
when you can't shut yourself up.

And the words that you hear seem torn and still true
so awful and perfect that listening is too much
but they are your own words.
How clumsy of me.

And the worst part is when you want to be quiet
but the sleep self denies, and lives through the night
speaking things you didn't know you could understand.

So you bite your own tongue and you dissolve your own words
they don't feel like yours, do they?
But your lips are stained
and they look the perfectly awful colour of the truth
so waking up and seeing your face adorned
with the mouth of someone who shouts the answers

the answers you didn't know you could understand,
feels distantly powerful.

The memories of the sleep shout are dead, they've gone to a space
that doesn't exist when you try for it.
And you are clumsy again
and you wait, again, for night to come.
To speak what is horrifyingly, beautifully whole.