where it starts
1. your girlfriend will have a miscarriage
for the second time
and you, you'll start using needles
THERE WILL BE NO DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS
but you tell yourself
a daughter is what would make life worth living
and subsequently what it takes to get you sober

2. you lose your job
because you're always in the bathroom missing veins
loss of job will inevitably spiral into an
"intolerable depression"
or
"extended sadness"
or
"whatever version of this is easiest to swallow"

3. you get to spend every holiday from your birthday until The Day She Dies sitting next to your mother's hospital bed
(except for when you're always in the bathroom, missing veiins)

LATER
your sister reassures you that mom didn't know the way you also choked back guilt with all the bile and unpleasant things in your trips to the restroom
but for now you will hate yourself
hate the sticky needles
and hate the way your girlfriend leaves all her ghosts behind when she leaves you

4. you find that bathroom floors are your new home
splayed out after your 8th overdose
jail cells are just a normal tuesday
and you keep waking up to razor blades left neatly on your pillow

where it ends

5. giving up ****** is like pulling teeth
messy and painful but typically necessary
and so hard to do alone

there is a tree
growing in this
womb
its roots cracking
from fissured earth
the trunk, in layers
                    unwrapping
sprouting solid
from ancient rebirth
Breathing light
into branches,
unfurling -
not always
with ease, yet
always in a rising,
not always in comfort
but in the end
a widening,
        lit horizon
of past blood lining shed
of crimson cycles renewed
of old patterns,
            gone and dead
of mosaic seedlings strewn
and now before
sacred eyes
a photosynthesis occurs
revealing leaflets, tender
reaching into
grounded universe
I am a star-system
a stellar orbit landscape
a singing cosmic rune
a ring of phosphate fire
under tourmaline moon
rubies, garnets, onyx
all pouring from this
innermost, feminine cavern
liquid gold, in lava form
precious metals,
a righteous storm
wild dancers
around the blaze
swaying magic
in midnight haze
and here I stand,
in uterine gleam
the fruit of my soul
the queen
          of my
dream

Under the weight
of loneliness
I wear the universe
like a cloak,
pressed around me,  pinned
holding me close in
its wild womb
gathering up the shards
of warm fire laughter
and voices
that weave into bones
rising in chants
pinnacles gently rocking
into a frenzy
of dark lunar dance

and my
inner moon rises
it's spackled lights
like penetrating eyes
wrapping me in its
blanket of
             stars