Ely Shipley

Boy with Flowers
My aunt loved me, asked me:
will you be the flower
girl at my wedding? But I’m not
a girl, I argued, and she persuaded me:
you’ll get to throw rose petals
onto the aisle, walk before me, both of us
crushing them beneath our feet, my gown
dragging over them. I agreed. I wanted
nothing but chivalry.
At the church, my mother and I
waited in the small room. She brushed
my aunt’s hair until the dress arrived.
Isn’t it beautiful? And I agreed until they tried
to put me in it. I’d seen my father
and uncle earlier, standing in a circle
of other men, smoke hovering over their heads, a halo
and their voices kind, quiet, and deep. I told my aunt—
I want to wear a suit like them! She promised
if I wore the dress I could wear anything
I wanted after: army pants, a sheriff
badge, cowboy hat, and pistols. My mother shot her
a look in the mirror where we posed, both of them
angelic in white, and me not yet
dressed. Today I wake from another dream
in which I have a beard, no breasts,
and am about to go skinny-dipping
on a foreign beach with four other men.
I’m afraid to undress, won’t take off my shorts,
so they gab me, one at each ankle, the other two
by each wrist. I am a starfish hardening.
The sun hovers above, a hot
mirror where I search for my reflection.
I close my eyes. It’s too intense. The light
where my lover is tracing fingertips
around two long incisions in my chest. Each sewn tight
with stitches, each naked stem, flaring with thorns.

Georgia O'Keefe

Playlist IV

I'm not going to say much. I'll let the music and the videos speak for themselves. I would like to add that the Angus and Julia Stone video is my favourite. And that Skinny Love has no official video but I am obsessed with this song so I had to put it up.

Okay that's all!