oh no
cut me
here and
here and
here
i’m
less than
what?
spokes in the rain
a spillover on highway
nowhere
i lapped your scent
til my heart
burst
mangled and
helpless

What do you do when you're proud of yourself for something you're too embarrassed to tell someone else?

Put those feelings on the shelf;
Top dollar purchase for the ones who sell out.

All my friends are down south,
but I'm northward bound because I just had to get out.

Slipping toward the ending of a tale never told.
Beginning in the middle because the intro's been sold now,
with everything falling apart while the false starts suddenly fall into place.

Keeping the old name but creating a new face.

Hit the dusty trail with a broken-down steed.
Feeding off the fumes of hearts in need while delivering gigantic fistfuls of nothing.

My twisted spirit demands recompense.

He swore to ignore every odd-ball notion that came awkwardly knocking at his door.

Irregular patterns tap-hapata-ladding like some kind of fiend desperate for human interaction.

"It's just a lump of useless tissue with issues I'll never be able to correct." - That's what the cardiologist thought as he had a heart attack.

I prayed, yes
but in
a dream-

ghost
was a book
with pictures

I pluck you a crocus
and all life becomes
a legend of the body

a torch-whipped storm
pastel in its fire
buries me in you

when I hand you the stem
a shake
and the yellow stamen

loses its dust

lady lady
forgets its bug
when I place the flower

in your vase

spots wiped black-less
insect no more
lady lady

the inspection of autumn
bulb-less growth
and a string of red

***** and betting its stripes

a tiny mound of dirt
obscured by rotting leaves

the last of you reaching for my hand

I’m sorry you have to see this. if I could starve invisibly, I would. my son’s surgeon worships ventriloquy. do you dream of the sleep you’ve already gotten? or of a thing so sad it gives birth? my abuser talks as if one can lose track of a mouth. in god’s favorite book, my ghost gets a hobby.

I am a constant train wreck waiting to happen
Always on the verge of almost not being here
There is never enough space to breathe
Never enough room to move
This world is my casket and I am frighteningly claustrophobic

When I was fifteen years old I came home from school one day and wrote a poem instead of cutting myself.
The next day I didn't write a poem.
Eighteen only wrote poetry in red.
Nineteen crawled under their desk with the lights turned off.
Twenty had panic attacks.
But thirteen still loved the world.
And ten only cared about going out to play.
And nine never thought growing up to be a gender would hurt so much.
But twenty-one can't breathe in this skin anymore.
And twenty-one doesn't want a twenty-two anymore.
And nineteen tried to pretend these feelings weren't real.
And fifteen tried to eradicate all the feelings altogether.
And seventeen just cried a lot.

My years have come together to unfold me into a disaster.
I am broken even in my most whole parts.
I am empty even on my most alive days.
If you send out a SOS into my chest the sound will ring off into its empty chambers and only answer itself.

You can call me Alex or Alexandra
The first time I said I liked girls my voice broke
Everyone turned to me as if I had cursed at the dinner table
My mother told me to go take a shower and think about it
But mom, you can't wash off who you are
And yes, I have been thinking about it
A lot

In a small town news spreads like wildfire
I was the walking disappointment in the middle of town square
I had been reduced to it till I was purged of this evil that threatened to claim my soul
No one would sit next to me in class
And everyday after the assembly I was taken aside and told I would burn
Hell had no mercy for those like me
But people, you don't tell a sixteen year old child that she is possessed by the devil

And the other day when I went to get my hair cut
They loped it all off
And they said there you like to **** girls now you can be a man
But a bad haircut doesn't make me a man
And all the abuses you can throw at me won't change who I am
And I stood there with their glares digging daggers into the back of my head
The old man cursed ****, and the parents covered their childrens eyes
As if I had a disease they would catch if they looked for too long

And they threw a burning stick in my front yard and said burn you deserve to burn
So i did
I burnt
I burnt myself piece by piece till there was nothing left but ashes
But remember you can burn down one Alex, one ****, one unholy sin but
There will rise another and another and another
Till this world will have to change and then
There will be a **** at every street corner and
I will look you in the eye and say how many will you burn?