like a deer’s head stuffed on shaky walls,
my eyes have become bulged, my tongue sedated.
my hunter wore no gear.
padded quietly underneath the yellow moon.
he found my limbs first, yanking and pulling
while my fingers burned.

my hunter had a smile like LSD,
his lips had lines shaky and uncontrolled.
he pulled me deep, deep, deep into
the forest, between oaks and pines and
the ground tasted like what i wanted to forget.
like blood.
like *****.
like nothing.

my hunter had stroked me.
such. a. prize. such. a. prize. such. a. prize.
he attempted to recite poetry, but
his voice sounded muffled, placing emphasis
on the wrong words.

my hunter wrapped my locks around my throat, and pulled
and yanked and pulled.
it all smelled like fire.
my wrists vomited violet flowers.
i had wanted to show him.

but my hunter chopped. me. up.
such a face. my legs, gushing pink and red and white.
my arms tinged yellow.

my head rests above his bed, and i watch
and watch and watch

my teeth won’t stop chomping

i am aching and my tongue tastes like your
******* ignorance. like salt with *****,
i want to *****.
your fingers prodded me until i thought they reached my
spine.
take the pieces out, i have already lost the stability of my
own canvas.
you are a man with unshaken wrists,
who's legs known only how to walk away,
your speech like writing on pavements, never lasting for
too long.
once you had covered me head to toe with marks.
bruises. scratches. i had become the rag doll.
you threw while your lips shivered,
your hand on my throat no longer felt like
peace.
i cannot stop thinking of your fingers in me, searching for
a lie, or a truth, or a ******* resemblance.
nose breathing in the fumes of tears, sweat and mistakes.
for some seconds, i had believed your teeth wanted to chew out flowers,
not ******* thorns.
in the morning, your face, i no longer knew.

you had become the monster i had seen so many times before.
the monster who says i miss you yet can't
look at you in public spaces.
the monster who only calls you beautiful when your legs are wrapped
around him.

i have known this monster. time and time and time again.

I have been obsessed with staring at people’s ring fingers. I have been obsessed with seeing if there are rings, and if there are, why? And if there isn’t, why? I have been obsessed with the concept of marriage. Of babies. Of living together forever and ever with just one person.

The thought tastes like milk washed down with soap. But I cannot stop staring at people’s hands. I want to ask how they knew. Was there a switch that was flipped? Was there music loud and thudding in their ears? How did they know that when they’re old with wrinkles under their eyes they’ll still want to kiss the other’s lips?

I check off my lovers with a sharpie on my wrists. I wonder if any of them thought I was the one. The sharpie bleeds and stains my shirt. A man told me once he loved me within a month of knowing me. Was that true, never ending love? He left cigarette ash in my car and didn’t know where to put his fingers. He had wanted a house, a kid, a dog.

In coffee shops, in grocery stores, in hallways, I am staring at people’s fingers. Some are smudged, some are dry with peeling skin, some are softly pink, and when I see the golden or silver bands milky soap sits underneath my throat.

I am checking my wrists.

i've known the boys like him, the boys
with the gentle eyelashes and the
lip petals and spikes.
he touches my hair, twirls it in his fingers.
i am always nothing more to them.

i want to be earthquakes and avalanches,
yet i fold, becoming the beers in their guts, the ash
on their tongues.
but the way his tongue finds my pelvic bones,
how his calluses kiss my bruises.
his scent echoes inside my pillows,
denial like ***** bordering my throat thick.

the boys want my skin, to flay and wear it.
i am a prize, shiny and golden,
and he is licking my insides, my blood and guts.
like wine,
on his mouth, dripping down his chest.

i see how he stares at others,
calculating and timing,
but in the end i am the one, bent over, the one he says he loves.
(to ****).
and i wonder if this will always be this.
nights tasting like cider and ***,
knees scabbed and bleeding and scabbed and
bleeding.

he never touches me outside the bedroom, his
fingers glued to the bike handles.
i want to cut him open and see what's really inside.

we never talk about the ******* afterward.
it's hidden in the dust on my sheets, his liquids still fresh,
his cologne stamped on my pillowcases,

instead he asks about work, mentions his exhaustion,
doesn't bring up the marks he always leaves,
the one on my arm like a birthmark,
the small red ones on my back,

the ones on my hips like roses left out for too long

last night his fingers pressed on my throat and he kept asking how
i liked it. i was drunk, he was drunk and when he said he loved *******
me i almost thought he said
he loved
me.

in my room we spoke of what we always spoke of, books and PhD's,
of classmates, of futures, and interrupting our conversation his
lips found mine, in a hungry kind of way,

he never really liked to kiss.

it'll be two weeks until i see him again, perhaps longer,
and our talks will be briefer, and i am hoping my scratches are long
and violent on his back, i hope his skull is stinging from my
pulls.

we **** like we'll never **** again, and maybe i haven't had
this passion in a long while,
because i know he'll never be mine.

his fingers on my throat felt like freedom, and it's in those hours between
late night and early morning we are nothing but skin,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,

i'm choking on my spit

i've seen your face, recently,
popped up like that nightmare i keep having where my body is left in
lukewarm sweat. your eyes are still as green as stems, and i want to
upchuck upchuck upchuckupchuckupchuck

it's funny how when i was 15 you were my king,
i would have crawled hands and knees, blisters popping like your
car speeding, impressing the ladies with your hair flicks and
tricks
and i know now i am still that 15 ****** dress up girl to you, only i've
filled out, filled in, know where to put the eyeliner, make it waterproof,
knowing how to speak, my tongue is whipping and sharpening

the last time we spoke we didn't speak. you didn't let me.
you shoved the drinks down my throat so fast the cards were blurry and you waited oh so patiently. 'you're such a bad girl', you said.
with your manhood prodding me, you spoke mean. you never spoke nice.
i wonder if i'll always love and hate you.

for so long you made me question myself.
maybe i shouldn't have worn that, or said that, or placed my foot a certain way or maybe i showed my teeth too much or maybe i was being too flirty, or maybe not enough.
these self doubts became my condolences, and even after we were 'friends', you never looked at me the same way. i had to be 'friends' with you because my friends loved you, even after i told them what you did to me.

i see your face like beers shoved in the back of the fridge,
and i am so mad at you, so mad, so mad, so mad, you've taken my guts
and thrown them into the ******* sun.
i was fifteen, you were almost eighteen you and took my limbs and broke them all.
i was prettiest to you on my knees, but baby i am the most beautiful when i'm stabbing you you you you
repeatedly.

i have a lump under my armpit,
thick and pressured, i want to bite it off, throw it inside a bin

it's coming to me when i am feeling bumps and growths in my
frontal lobes. as i walk into the sunshine,
i can no longer see the road or the buildings or the twigs in her
hair.

mom had her breast removed.
i cannot bare to think about me
without any
hair.

these words that i want in the worlds books, will instead
sink into my veins and have no meaning
but instead let me be my own Ophelia, and i will link daisies in my hair
and drown singing no song but my own

my fingers are pressing against the wall, but all i have is callouses.