Naughty Girls Dream In Color By Alicia Winski

am a naughty girl 

(or so some would say),

I'm messy and scattered with 
my mind over there, when 
it should be over here

I

color outside the lines, 
breaking the rules and often

get bit in the ass for it--(teeth are 
a lot sharper than they look) and 
I have the scars to prove it

(blood coagulates slowly, but

        it does eventually stop flowing)

I

like to flout convention--

it's rarely with malicious 
or deliberate intent 

(this outlaw nature 

                           knows no better) 
but living with condemnation is
becoming a secondary way of 
life these days

I

often make people uncomfortable 

with my silence; my eyes fixated 
on their face and they-, 
they don't know how to handle it, 
their eyes in rapid shift mode--

(where can I run to, 

they rarely realize 
I'm not really listening;

I'm busy dreaming, and

(it's not difficult to sleep 

I

tend to keep opinions to myself  
(for the most part anyway);

people don't want to hear it--

my thinking doesn't seem to 
conform to the 'norm'; the 
'standards' set by a society   
polluted, tainted with inhibition, 
with hypocrisy, and

(I find it difficult to catch my breath through smoke and mirrors)

I

am intensely passionate 
in a dispassionate world, 
I'm fierce in my love;  
making love to me is 
no momentary distraction,  
no anonymous action quickly   
taken, no cheap flirtation, 
a hasty exchange of flesh & fluid;  
no, my love has teeth --

I bite into it, shaking it to its core; 
my love is devastating 

in its ferocity

(roll over, show me your vulnerability, that underbelly so soft, so tender) and 

I 
will show 
             you mine

I

will absorb all you have to give; 
take you onto me, scorching you 
with my intensity;  

red hot, volcanic,
incinerating; and when you 
lie spent, scalded--

I

will flow over you 

with the cooling,   
healing balm of my love cauterizing your wounds, 

smoothing old scars 
left behind by the desecration, 
the careless devastation of  
those who have come before me

I

like to run with scissors, 
skip through puddles, 
laugh out loud in inappropriate   
places, sing off-key while dancing 
in public, detached, immune 
to disapproving faces

(Act your age woman! 

                      You're an adult 
for Christ’s sake-behave yourself!)

I

find humor where most don't,

find sorrow where 

others find humor--

I don’t connect the dots, 
go from A to Z,

I am wakeful while others sleep, 
I give away 

what most would keep, 
I collect the uncollectable, 
I find music in silence,

I am magical in a world sorely 
in need of magic--

I am messy in a world 
of anal retentives, I am a 
naughty,

           naughty

                     naughty girl

in a cookie cutter world 
of good behavior and while 
others dream their dreams 
in crisp, pristine Armani 
black and white--

  I dream—

                in Color