I see him rise again —
draped in fire, wrapped in light,
and I, the quiet one,
can only reflect what he gives me,
can only follow,
never lead.

He burns without asking permission.
the clouds part for him like scripture,
the trees lean toward him in worship,
the world spins just to feel his warmth.
No one ever asks what it costs me
to chase someone who never turns around.

I am the Moon —
soft, silver, cold in comparison.
But still, I pull oceans to their knees.
Still, I move the blood in your veins,
still, I rise in every poem about longing
and make it hurt a little more.

He does not love me.
he probably never will.
but I dream of it anyway,
like a sinner kissing the gates of Heaven
knowing they won’t open.
Like thirsting in a drought
and calling the mirage divine.

He is the Sun —
So bright it hurts to look.
So far I can’t breathe when he’s near.
So beautiful I could scream.
And I do.
In silence, in tides,
in every broken wave that crashes
because I couldn’t hold it in.

I make storms when I’m angry.
I make art when I’m desperate.
I drag the night behind me
Like a velvet funeral shroud,
because loving him feels
a lot like dying slowly
and calling it romance.

Sometimes, he looks over his shoulder.
just barely.
Just enough for me to write epics
about things that never happened.
Just enough for me to mistake heat
for affection.

I am not jealous —
I am envy incarnate.
I am longing with teeth.
I am the boy who watches from a distance
and writes sonnets with shaking hands
While the world burns for someone else.

He doesn’t know what I’d give
to feel his warmth
without blistering.
To stop orbiting
and finally touch.
But I am the Moon.
He is the Sun.
And that is all we were ever allowed to be.

So I smile in silver.
And I shatter the sea.
And I say his name quietly
when the Earth is sleeping,
as if that will make it real.

As if that will make him mine.

roots buried deep in the soil,
twisting, clinging,
but always searching
for something just beyond reach,
as if to say,
"i belong, but never fully."

the stem stands tall,
fragile beneath its weight,
a spine bent by the wind,
swaying but never breaking,
holding the promise of growth
that feels too far to touch.

leaves unfurl in silence,
drinking the light,
but never truly satisfied,
reaching for something warmer,
something richer —
but always feeling the cold beneath.

a flower blooms,
beautiful for a moment,
and then fades
petals falling like whispered secrets,
crumbling into dust,
as though beauty was never meant to stay.

fruit hangs heavy with promise,
but when touched,
it rots —
sweetness turning bitter,
a taste of desire gone sour,
left to fall unpicked,
forgotten in the earth.

and yet,
the cycle repeats—
new roots,
new stems,
new leaves,
all reaching for the same sun,
knowing it will never shine long enough.

the wind hums like an old song,
but no one remembers the words.
once, they rang clear
soft voices, small hands,
feet bare against the earth,
before the dust turned to ash,
before the air tasted like rust.

the old therebefore,
when the world was wide,
when time was slow,
when a morning could stretch forever
and a night held no teeth.

once, the rain kissed open palms
without burning,
once, the sky bent low enough
to whisper secrets to the quiet.
once, a child could run
without knowing where,
without knowing why,
without the weight of knowing at all.

but the world teaches.
too early, too fast, too sharp
it carves lessons into skin,
shapes innocence into something brittle,
something that bends until it breaks.

the old therebefore,
when monsters only lived under beds,
not in boardrooms, not in uniforms,
not in the quiet spaces between words.

the old therebefore,
when promises meant something,
when love did not carry conditions,
when leaving was a choice,
not an inevitability.

but the past is a house
that no longer stands,
only the bones remain,
only the dust in the empty frame of a door
that once opened to something warm.

and yet
in the hush before sleep,
in the hush before waking,
the wind hums that old song again,
soft, quiet, waiting
for someone to remember.

do you see it?

the ghost of a body still pretending to be whole,
stitched together with breath too shallow to hold,
stitched with nights that never end,
with mornings that never mean anything at all.

do you see the signs?

the moth drawn to the wick,
wings already smoldering,
the glass filling too full, too fast,
spilling over onto hands that do not flinch.

the rope hums its song in the rafters,
the blade dreams beneath the bed,
the sea sings with its mouth open,
waiting, waiting, always waiting.

and oh, if only you could see
how the body answers.

it leans over balconies,
toes curling against the lip of the abyss,
wondering how it might feel to be air,
to be a prayer half-spoken and swallowed whole.
it lingers at the water’s edge,
feeling the pull,
the old song of the tide,
the voice of god in the undertow.

this is how it happens, isn’t it?
not in fire, not in fury,
but in the slow and quiet way a candle drowns in its own wax,
in the way hands stop reaching,
in the way a name turns to dust on forgotten tongues.

why do you watch,
and why do you wait,
if not to stop it?

a simple answer, truly,

"because who can catch a shadow
when it has already learned how to slip
through the cracks?"

here, beneath the shadowed bough,
you reach —
a single, red glisten,
heavy with promises.
the weight of the world lies
in your palm,
unspoken,
sweet.

but the skin, oh —
it is too thin, too thin
to withstand
the breaking.

a bite, a ripple
through the quiet,
unhinging time,
unraveling the silence
as your teeth sink
deep.

your tongue tastes
the truth of the earth —
sour, sharp,
forbidden.
and from your mouth
pours
a flood of knowing,
flooded with the weight of seasons,
lost, swallowed whole
into you.

a garden crumbles.
the roots,
now tangled,
burden you —
bent, broken beneath
the fruit you’ve borne.

and so you stand,
in the ruins of choice,
eyes wide, waiting
for the consequence
to catch up.

the apple rests still,
forgotten,
waiting
for your next
bite.

the seeds have been sown
they will sprout in spring
showers share sustenance

the rye is ready to reap
rooted in rocky regolith
the resourceful reward

saved for sooner, sought
by shadows; steal scraps
when spoiled seeds stink

starved so soon, save me

there is a temple of iron and glass,
its doors gaping like a beast’s maw,
breathing in disciples,
spitting them out sculpted, shining, sure.
it hums in my ribs,
soft at first, then a roar, then a tremor that unroots me.

i do not enter.

instead, i map myself in the mirror,
fingertips skimming over fault lines,
skin stretched over the wreckage of someone else's war.

i am a house that has been broken into,
windows rattling at the memory of hands
that turned me into something hollow.

they say to run,
but my legs remember pursuit.
they say to lift,
but my shoulders recall the weight of silence.
they say to push, pull, press, forge myself into more —
but all i hear is
small, smaller, gone.

inside, the air is thick,
a storm of clashing metal and breath
from giants who have never learned to fear themselves.
but i am made of glass,
fractured and fogged,
a shape too fragile to shatter again.

they say strength is safety.
but strong was never safe.
strong was fists, voices raised, doors torn from hinges.
strong meant surviving,
but never stopping.
strong meant something was always coming.
strong was never mine.

so i walk past.

i keep my hands buried in the fabric of my sleeves,
let the night swallow me whole,
tell myself tomorrow.

tomorrow, maybe.

but tonight,
i let the ghosts win.

Memory
     is necessary
     whether sad
      or happy

    we're shaped
    by the past
    what has happened
     will ,until the end, last

     if it were done with
     where would there be sanity?
      We'd each be like a zombie
      living in no-man's country

     memory is necessary:
     time, people, images, places
     all come together to remind
      we are human,  not just faces

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a **** lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

when i spilled onto this earth,
i was born with a human head
and a mane
no one thought anything strange about this
of course
not so strange to have a mane
i was just ahead of the curve
(which would not be a trend)

i grew and so did my mane
it blossomed bushily
i got my name
and, when the first fist arrived at my ribcage,
i got my first fang

sulfurous and shaking
rank marlboro breath
reeking from sorry bones he called teeth
the first of many came
and showed me that my human head
was soft
resilient
and surprisingly springy
bouncing with less pain than i thought
off of banisters
and landings
(ironically named the moment you land on one,
don’t you think?
but i digress)

must have been from all that bouncing
that my human head began
to shift
into something else
but it was made real the moment
those haunted knuckles knocked on the door to my heart
my jaw snapped
like my mind
and i bit
just bit
deep and visceral
his glazed eyes wide
with surprise
maybe fear
(although not for long
before the first was joined
by the second
but
still)
as i sailed away through the air
about to bless a landing with its purpose
i saw the arc
monument of my malicious maw
broken into skin
an insidious smile
but not that of a child
my head was a lions now
as my follicles foresaw
on my zeroth day

i was eight when i got my horns
it was surprising actually
third week of third grade
prismatic fissures of light
creating colorful schisms
in the asphalt of the church’s parking lot
i drank in the bittersweet view
as my face fell toward it
my travel sponsored by another boy
more sadism than sense
and two years past the rest
a fact never languished on for long

as most trophy hunters do,
he inspected his ****
a little too much hubris
about a little thing he just did
my chubby form rose
like Dracula from his coffin at dusk
stiff and unyielding
despite the protestations of my body below
and delivered my forehead to his own
the eponymous number of times
face newly painted in a scarlet shade
half blood below the skin
half above
he said you’re crazy
i didn’t know he was right, you see?
so that statement very much offended me
and so i added one to my quota and left
the nuns told me not to be so stubborn
not to hurt other kids
Jesus would turn the other cheek, they said
but Jesus also turned up dead
they said i was stubborn as a goat
my hair wild and unkempt
canines glistening wetly with blood
and, as if to suggest it knew what a goat was,
a **** on my scalp split open
just a bit more
just enough for sable spirals to rush forth

i was thirteen when i got my venom