Crystal was her name
But she was not crystal clear
Instead she was dull and heavy, and her eyes didn’t gleam, they smoldered like smoke
Stuck in a room until it chokes everyone inside
And that smoke choked her soul
Choked it with every boyfriend came, scarred and lost
Choked it with every time she came home, and her mother was in drunken stupor
On their sunken couch, still clutching her empty glass
I tried to unplug her vengeance, to hold open her wounds
But she covered herself with Band-Aids and absorbed herself with vodka
Vodka her mom had left uncorked on their glass table
A table so clear that each glistening drop flicked off the rim of the bottle to shine like a star
So when I slept over I could make constellations out of them
And when she leaves to take a bath I sit trancelike, circling those stars
Until it’s too quiet and I can hear that faucet drip

And then my own heart opens up, because I know Crystal, and I am afraid
I know her heart has no drains, only a plug, knotted and age old stuffing up its crevices
Holing up its chambers, where deformed emotions have rusted into shape
And she made her own drains, cuts her own crude holes
Jagged and filled with darkened streaks of night that lay on her parted lips,
Lips white as a skinned moon’s raw bone
So her scars and fissures drain not her molded feelings, but her blood
The most potent part left, rich and warm in its redness in comparison to her lifeless cold
And while my holes are a sieve only for that which hurts,
She filters out all that sustains
Floating in her own tears, her red tears, that stain eyes as well as the tiled floor

And as I thrust open that door to the bathroom and look on, I aimlessly wonder
If those tears are maybe just streaks of her red mascara, that have swum down her body
Not tears from her veins, but arcs of makeup, trying to flush her with color
But I realize no makeup remover could ever attempt to cleanse this stained floor
And the bathtub’s drain doesn’t filter it out either
It lets the blood run straight down, just like she let it from her heart
But it isn’t hers any-more, she has none left to lose, and only I
Crouching at the edge of my distorted visions and a clawed tub,
Will be truly stained. And no amount of scrubbing will ever remove the image of her

The image of her hair spinning in water’s whirlpools like dead reeds in the red sea
The image of her claws, her fingers dripped in red nail polish
And the image of her emptiness, and I have only the image of her lying cold there
Stained in different vivid colors on the back of my lids like a broken mosaic
After all the noises of sirens and motions swirling I was still stained
So afterwards I took 10 showers, scrubbing my skin raw with Lavender scented soap
Rubbing my eyes sore and dousing them in saline solution till they ran salty
But just like Crystal, I will never again be pure
Never again be crystal clear