Sick with the stars that shine in the sky
The sky you could be looking into
The stars I handed to you, fingers broken and trembling
With pain and rage and hope
Sick with the winds and the rain
Howling around me, lashing into my skin
Wind that whips long wet strands of black hair to cover my eyes and renders me as blind as I willed myself to be.
It wasn’t you who plucked out my eyes but my own treacherous fingers,
Driving into vulnerable ocular orbs, fingers cutting into the tender cells making up flesh before tearing the organs free.
Rain slicks down my skin, renders my clothes too wet to move, heavy and frozen in the night.
What is there to miss?
What is there to rage over?
What about you could have possibly left me bereft?
You are a dragon guarding the last of its hoard of treasure, nothing there but a few measly coins.
I am a traveller starving, fistfuls of air all I have won from you.
And I gave you the stars, though they burned my mortal eyes.
And I gave you the sky, though its weight cracked my shoulders.
But giving can’t be regretted without becoming a judgment on the giver.
So I gave to you and I would give again.
I suppose regret comes in around the edges of the wound —
Closing, praise to god it is closing —
And goes something like this:
“I still wish you had wanted to give to me in return”.
But life is so little about our wants.
I want you to be happy.

She loves you more than I will,
And Lord knows but you don’t love me.
Her circular curves –
Filled with such verve –
Blind so you can’t hardly see.
You could try to escape,
You tail-eating snake,
But your own misery
Is such better company
Than us mere mortals can provide.
You stew in your own **** unhappiness –
And I could be wrong,
To hate you for it,
But **** being right anyway.

I want to be above myself.

I want to be beyond myself.

I push off from the ground, one skip, two,

Desperation behind the grate of my sneakers scraping against the pavement,

And then it takes and I heave myself into the air, flying.

I am above the clouds, above the swirl and eddies of white condensation forming mountains, forming rivers, mimicking the ground below,

But still the pink stripe of the setting sun is higher,

Still the sun is higher.

Still immolation is beyond my reach,

And flight fails me as I fall back to the earth.

I test the nib of the fountain pen against my finger,
Testing its sharpness, its edges.
Then I place the point against the pale moonlight of my flesh,
And push it slowly between two ribs, skin parting reluctantly.
I carefully work it deeper into the hole created by the head, the nib disappearing into the red secrets of my insides,
Rivulets of blood running past the smooth black edges, designed to be gripped comfortably, ergonomically while writing,
Red falling down past the grasping circle of my white skin.
The tip ****** my heart, still beating too slowly, too wounded, and with a twist blood fills the compartment made for ink.
I am made of paper white and ink black anyway.

I am a tangle of wild keyed up emotion that roars beneath my skin.

You could be forgiven for thinking restraints held me down as I sit here in the dark,
for thinking I was strapped into this chair.

Nails digging into --

flesh

-- the wood of the armrests.

Muscles straining and perfectly still.

If I don’t move, maybe it will quiet.

If I don’t move, maybe it will leave me alone;

No longer lashing into my brain,

Self-flagellation demanding more,

Harder, faster, more

More pain to feed the craving for escape, to punish for the regrets and failure, to show that there is striving, progress, as I strain to be else.

Maybe if I hold still this need for pain, punishment, this urgent desire to outpace myself will rest.

It is louder than my own thoughts, but not the ragged breaths pulled from my chest when I have exhausted my own ability to tear one step further down the street

I wish I could tear a hole in the fabric of the world and disappear somewhere new, somewhere the hornets’ nest of my own thoughts would be unable to follow me.

I am so proud, so indefatigable in defence of myself.
You bring me down, down to my knees, hard enough to make me bleed, grit in the wounds and
I will kneel here, while you circle, show you my devotion if you would but look;
I am little more to you than a supplicant.
Oh feel my hands clasped together in prayer, whispered words that wind their way round you;
Feel my wanting, feel my wine drunk breath, holy communion is so close at hand.
You could take me palm to palm,
Kisses just like saints have done,
Know that I burn for you, on my hands and knees.
I’ve never begged before, but for you I’d pray
For you I’d wait forever, in sanctity and ablution till my skin grew cold beneath holy waters.