Our lungs represent love

Better than the heart

Even when I hold my breath

My lungs refuse to give up

The morning I found the box
of photo albums in the attic
I learned that
the sun would have risen
even if I hadn't

Daylight is not necessarily
a good metaphor
for life

There you were
ten years earlier
having a picnic on the kitchen floor
despite the rain storm
visible through the foggy window behind you

You can make sandwiches
in any type of weather
but seeing the photos
loaned me understanding of why
you don't eat rye bread anymore

When I went back down stairs
I took our bread box outside to the birds
and made you soup
in silence.

for the next twelve months, i will become an open flame. i will spread my body, i will raise my voice, become a wildfire,
from the inside out.
i promise this to myself,
each tear that swims and spills is never again a sign of weakness
but an expression of my heart, that my mask has burned away to show my new skin, my scar skin, my healing.

i'm born out of a habit of self-destructive patterns

i'm born out of a foreigner's vacation
i am the product of anxiety, of wealth ill-gotten,
of american 90's dreams and excuses

i'm shaken like a passenger on a wooden roller coaster
i'm mixed like "mutt" like "i don't know what you are"
like exotic
like *****

I keep telling myself that if I lay here long enough something's gonna swallow me and it's not because my heads been somewhere else lately it's because I sleep on the floor. Even when I don't. I sleep on the floor. The mattress has holes because mattresses get holes sometimes when you don't have blankets to cover them and you're too cold to put the cigarette out on anything other than yourself or what you have to sleep on now. Last year I'd spend every day in bed with a little bag full of drugs and a map to the bathtub just in case I forget what I took two seconds ago because I think it happened yesterday and I take more. And then I'm shaking, not because I'm cold this time. I'm seizing and nobody is home because everybody leaves me for preachers or church or a campfire or someone prettier. This part is foggy. I remember again a bathtub, an empty hotel bathtub and my mother and I say mama did you leave the door open on purpose and she says I went to church. She went to church. She went to church. Bathtub. I sleep there. Even though we are in a hotel I sleep in the bathtub because I like the way my anxiety sounds when it echoes. I like to hear it. Play it back. Memory. Back to the only house I've ever lived in alone.  I'm seizing. I stop. I hear you. I somehow forget that it's 4 in the morning. It's my birthday now, nobody knows but it's my birthday now, teen years behind me but still a teen year drug addiction and you tell me to look out the window so I do. And the sky's on fire. I don't fall asleep again for three days but the sky's on fire. And so am I. And so are you. And I don't want to go back to the place I go to when I see the faces but I put myself here. I push and push and push and then I act surprised when something falls off the edge. I'm alone now. Even when I'm not. I'm alone.

I have voices in my head.
sometimes they are mine and sometimes they are that girl walking down the street without a hat or a home address and I know this because I know things without knowing them.
there is hurt here, in this car full of silver and new and no smoking or I'll rip your fingers off.
my mother knows how to say amen like she's still dedicated to the Catholic Church I tell her, you should have given that up the day they refused to baptize me.
everyone sees dark in me where there is none.
I was a baby and I was a baby and I'm still a baby, or I wish I was.
I'm a baby who cries and says good morning every day even if it's not.
I say good morning when I wake up after missing dinner
I refuse to touch China now
my hands don't listen to the voices in my head all they think is break break break and the break break break sounds itself like cracking open and I need to lobotomize the dishes in here before she gets sentimental about handing them down to me when I finally find someone who isn't scared of waking up beside me to find my throat slashed
here it is. truth, because there is no right or wrong there is truth.
and truth sets you free.
it sets you free and it has you without a hat or a home address and you still wonder why nobody sends you letters back.
you say they forget your name. Or your middle name but it doesn't matter.
I only answer to "baby girl, do you want me to call the doctor for you?"

Father mosquito
drank my blood
and promised me
that there was a lot
to live for:
***, money,
women, love,
food, water.

But *** is only worth
the ten seconds
after I ***:
the ten seconds
where my body breaks
but not my heart.

And money is an idea
that belongs to someone else.
So, the money I have
never really is mine.
The things I need,
I'll never have.
The things I have,
I'll never need.

I do love the softness of women,
Father Mosquito.
You have understood me
once.

It's just underneath
my skin.

But you say love
and no love
is as important
as self-love.
No lips stitched into mine
is worth the feeling
unless I understand my worth,
and you're currently
*******
it
dry.

What happens when food
loses its taste?
And water is no longer cold?
What happens when
my body fails me?
Drink my blood
since it is yours, too,
father.

It's just underneath
my skin.

I know you,
You claim you want happiness,
You want romance and joy,
Not the broken people.
Then tell me why,
Tell me why all my
most popular writing
Is about pain and suffering?

Reality flashbacks
life spinning on a dime
open the doors of perception
let's commit a crime