We let them believe
We are fine--
That the pain we write on our skin
Is just a typo,
Not an epitaph
For who we once were--
A eulogy
For the child's spirit they killed.

Like the gaping, empty mouth
Of an infant child, I yearn,
My mind an arid expanse.
I live in its dunes as a beggar,
Thirsting for nourishment of thought—
A taste long forgotten by the tongue.

I began to notice,
During my sixteenth year,
That my heart pulled to some other haunt.
I longed for a place to rest my eyes at night--
A place where I could escape the droning hum
Of man fixed to machine--
Where I could gaze, at midnight,
Upon the light shining through pinpricks
In the taught, dark sheet.
I began to feel deadened by routine,
By the icy glare of headlights
And blinding, bold storefronts.

everyone secretly hopes
that a syndrome
—a respectable eruption—
will cause the world to admire
the performance
of the youngest sisters—
of the beautiful, modest,
worried people.

“Is it going to explode?”

some are dainty
some are kind

some are precious
some are vile

some are poisonous
and black underneath

some are thin
and corkscrew-like

turning constantly
until morning.

break off the cover
show a buried pit of coals.

when done, skin
scales, or feathers will all come off.

it made you feel awful—
the contagion very carefully got,
letting the slump in again
and in, and again,
deeper and deeper than ever before,
shaking, trembling, mouth
shut over a sudden darkness
like a token—a dry
communion tablet.

I sit squat in the hollows
Of this massive skull.
It is where my weight resides—
Just inside the great cathedral arches
Of the brow bone.
I can look only outward at the world

From these odd windows and lay mute.
Under my door,
A draft sneaks in from a passageway,
And I wonder what now lies beyond.
I can only imagine, for there are bits of me—
Parts of my own psyche that are terribly,

Painfully inaccessible—dusty corridors left
Long untrodden to savage, rotten things
And hidden gems
Locked in safes in rooms
Closed off behind shut doors,
And here I sit,

Separate from it all—
The bad and the good,
—in this cold, dank and empty
Space lined by stone-bone walls, door fastened
From without.
Now some fiend has come

And locked me in,
Locked it from the other side.
I cannot escape. If only I had let the anguish storm through—
Felt it ripping raw against my skin—if only I had not
Stowed it away in some remote
Recess in the far reaches of my mind

To fester and to grow. If only I could now live
Without this severance from myself.
If only, if only...

I am wary of these arachnoid beasts.
How foreign they seem!
They are resting now,
Curled delicately upon my lap at each folding joint,
Looming faithfully.
They cling to me, and naturally so.
Yet, we are not one entity.
They are far too elegant
To notice me, their blundering mother.
They suckle my blood dispassionately,
Yet it is painless,
A numb event.

A large, leaning figure of a man
in tenebrous coattails,
slight and mantis-like,
waits for me
at the end of a long, dark hall.

A phantom,
he does not speak,
yet he allures me
silently,
letting his stillness attest
to his presence.

His featureless shadow of a face
screams silently of hunger,
greed,
a desire for my liveliness--
for my ability to walk freely in the light.

i tell time by the switching
      on        and        off
of fluorescent lights. there is no
sunset, only night
then day
and night again.

my head glows alight
with chatter. brain cells burn
inside like the bright
infernal filament of a bulb.
my skin and skull
are made of smooth, round glass.

please
do not gaze too intensely
at my madness, for it is painful
to behold. your eyes
may water, throat tight with tears
at what you cannot fix—
at what you cannot control...