It’s just past midnight, and I fall into a crouch in the middle of the living room.
It’s dark, not by design
But because I’ve failed three times to fix the **** light,
And I’ve only just realized I bought the wrong bulbs.
Such a small thing but I can’t convince myself to pull my hands from my eyes
Because suddenly the light means so much more than it should
All these things that aren’t what they’re supposed to be
Where they’re supposed to be.
Please come back and fix the light.

I keep eating things I shouldn’t.
Dreams, cars, ink, brick
These are the things that make me sick.
Skin, bone, flesh and scars
Topped with sugar, flush with stars
Love, death, silence still
Down the gullet, living will
Though I swore I wouldn’t
I’m eating things I shouldn’t
Again.

I don’t understand why love should save.
It’s sinking still
Stills of whiskey, mellow bitter.
Metal tinned, heavy and satisfying
It makes you weep and rage and sleep.
Aching toes and numb cheeks, silent sobbing into your pillow
For reasons that haven’t come to you yet.
Do you feel saved? For numbness? Dripping
Gaping mouths, searching.
Am I talking about love or a monster?
We can’t tell.
I won’t argue with results, fact sheets still dripping romantic slurs
But I will argue that saving is not what you think it is. Mercy
Is not what you think you’ve made it.

We are tired of years ago tired of to be tired.
I’m a clock in the shape of a woman, counting months in weeks
Weeks in days in hours in minutes in seconds
Recorded in the strands that make me
Water slipping through my hands, I’ll ask you to keep it safe
But you only have your own hands to use.

There are houses on this street filled with wolves.
He-wolves and she-wolves and wolf-whelps howling for meat
Scattered like snowflakes across the neighborhood.
It starts slow, and ends with “I lost my temper” “It was their own fault”
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
Some of us are eaten up, and some of us grow wolves in our own bellies,
And some last long enough to meet our wolves down the line.
What does it matter if you become the wolf or not?
What narratives are left to us now?