boring, this exile /

god drags a belt through the garden
and the angels broke my radio

Iridescent Moon tears,
Or is it the Moon melting into the stars?
Maybe, it's the tinkering in my head,
But I so desperately wish that it was all real.
That you and I were in that melting *** of a night sky,
So dark yet it didn't swallow our shine.

Heaven rained on me,
I breathed in the petrichor,
Bathed in the downpour.

o rabbit
of death
where is
your paw

"I ever tell you about that fish? That big, ******* catfish with the human eyes. How it looked at us, so full of doom. And you can't miss doom, you know. When you see it in some eyes. But it wasn't just doom. There was something else. Something familiar- like... like disappointment. Like that ******* fish was watching us from the shallows, and it tagged that hook with purpose. But then it got up here, right. It got up here and saw us. Just some drunks. Just some idiots. Now, I don't know if fish think about God, but I think about God. I think about God a lot. About the day I'll meet the man. And I'm afraid most of those days. Afraid I'll wake up naked on a river bank, doom in my eyes, and not much liking what I see."

"Everyone's afraid of dying, dad."

"Not the dying, boy. Do you listen when I talk? What do you think we did with that catfish, huh? We didn't take it to heaven: we ******* ate it."

a spider the size of blood.

softness in the middle of nowhere.

abandoned milk on dead grass.

sheets on the clothes line. all those

eyeless ghosts.

the city of dreams is a full moon over still water. the stranger in my bed wants a tooth. any tooth, he says. i think he is the devil. no magic, i say. no moth, no lightbulb. i can’t take it. but he begs like honey. he finds my many stars. are you the devil, i ask. are you the tooth fairy. the stranger speaks, but it’s backwards. his body grows snakes, but they’ve no fangs. there is a lake in my bed and i drown. when the tooth comes out, it comes easy. i think it wanted to go. i really do

if there is a monster in the hallway. the hallway. endless stretch of doorless nothing. poorly laid carpet. fake light. i pull out my guts, let them trail behind me. i pull out my teeth, breadcrumb them along the floor. i retie my blindfold with ****** hands. where is the monster. i don’t want to be alone

there was no god in my 1998. there was a mother. she smelled like a makeup bag. read me poetry. there was a step dad with a pillowcase full of kittens. a step brother with a drill and a marker. my long braid. shirtless cousin with a bb gun. sister with cut off bangs. a baby, somewhere. i don’t know why i’m telling you this. it’s an old story

(the lore is dead. it perfumes my body. my body is a funeral home. the mourning in me)

god, i’ll be real. the lore isn’t dead. my body isn’t a funeral home. i’m depersonalizing. i’m half eaten. i’m entering my romcom era and my body is political. it doesn’t feel safe so i take my body home. i tell her hard truths. i feel bad doing it. she’s dumb. she’s like a baby. look what happened to her diary. how can she survive outside