At Seventeen, She's a Lunatic

Her world thrums with life, it beats
and swells and
drums with life.
Always hurried, insistent, incessant -
it's a pain; it's a pang.
All her world's a stage.

Her days are symphonies -
Beethoven or Dvorak -
on repeat at the long, slow melancholy melodies.

They're Romantic novels -
Jane Austen or Jane Eyre -
with wide, foggy meadows, and tall flaming turrets.

She steps, she slides,
she runs with life.
She hums in place with life.

Her world is the forehead of a boy -
his dark, dramatic hairline,
his clever fingers drumming
on his desk,
on her brain.

Her whole world is the forehead of this boy,
filling her retina like the waxing moon.

He's Darcy and she's Elizabeth;
He's James McAvoy and she's Keira Knightley;
He's Henry Miller and she's Anais Nin.

Her nights are Frank Miller stills -
stepping out past curfew with her girls,
her only loves,
and finding them in the shadows
by the whites of their eyes.

She finds them in the city streets
like Nine Inch Nails,
thrumming and insistent,
driving ever forward.

Her dreams are Charlie Kaufman films -
Eternal Sunshine or John Malkovich -
labyrinths of consciousness,
wistful and desperate.

And her days, again, are Van Gogh swirls,
Botticelli curls,
Debussy whirls.

She thrills and trills and
spins with life; she fills and spills
and bursts with life.

Her world is one big, rosy, throbbing organ,
sensitive to her touch,
to her molding,
and always tilting slightly forward,
flushed and hushed,
waiting on its toes.