<b style="color:#ff10f0;">glowstick</b>

Content warning: allusions to self-harm; blood

you double dog dare me. i know these bubbles well: the resounding echo of a popped

             knuckle between hands, a twig cracked in two, this time between the tines of

             my leering teeth. cocksure, until it breaks

like a bone, fractured through. the marrow vibrates verbena, neon pink, the cast of

             sickly skyscrapers and long drives during witching hour. its hex is a hash and

             six digits, with a fifty-pixel glow that would crisp the screen if left to burn.

             on my tongue, it tastes

like dentistry: blue surgical masks before the wire breaks, nylon hands unhinging my

             jaw, the haze of black sunglasses pushed thickly up the bridge of my nose. my

             tongue heavy with plastic shrapnel, i bubble cotton candy and spit, watch the

             fuchsia froth on the tarmac

like a fish writhing on land. glowworms have wound their way into the ulcer inside

             my lip, cherry-red and bitten raw, protruding like a thumb from thick,

             gummy skin. i try to scratch it with my teeth and come up bleeding,

             gagging,

bait and hook. chemicals have sunken into the cavities, and they choke my molars

             with sea fireflies, turn my canines to angler fish. savage, they gnash for

             vengeance in an oil spill sea. all saliva and dibutyl phthalate, it seeps around

             the shark fin under my tongue,

fit for a drowning.