last night i woke up on the floor. or at least
i think i did, and even that was maybe a year ago because
time isn't real, and anyone who thinks so or lives by the minutes will die before any sane person tells them to ignore the ticks. ****, they don't even realize time doesn't make noise. the slow inevitable marching? that's silence.

i remember when i was about eight or nine, a very young girl in a very blue school, my hands practically glued to the wood in front of my face every day for morning prayer. and hell, i swear, religion is delusion and time isn't real. anyone who prays to anything other than what they can see is only making excuses.

i remember being this young girl and loving the pain i was in, yet later learning this pain was called **** and this **** would be the next nine years of my life before i recognized it in the dictionary.

i did not stray from this pain, i did not stray from the abnormality of Christianity as a way of ****,  i did not stray from the fact that a woman wanted my body as much as i wanted a friend. i did not stray from the fact that a woman could ****.

even though i knew Adam and Eve loved each other, i hadn't ever heard of Eve and Eve and Eve and a little girl like me, and so on.
i knew what *** was before this, but of course considered it holy and equally unholy, something my small and shaking hands didn't get to feel.

was i wrong to assume that? maybe.  i think i remember loving it, or maybe only because love goes with *** and *** is beautiful and it happened to make me. was i a victim? of ****? of love? i cannot think much more of this at a time, it makes me feel as though i am crazy.

i have definitely lost control. i have made dents in the walls, smashed and shattered objects around the house, not even my house. i have screamed, yes, and cried till i can't hear myself cry and i have shook and shook until im surprised i don't fall apart or bite my tongue off. but how much control did i have to lose?

i do not write as much as i used to, perhaps i am too concerned over aesthetic, do i sound poetic? even if i don't, words are words, however abstract or ugly, they hold truth
perhaps i should write more.
i do relish the occasional purgatory.
releasing sin is necessary, even those you never committed.

we all need a little guilt in our lives.

i try to breathe through this suffocation
defy my own existence in a place
that expects you not to exist but
to scream I AM ALIVE
and simultaneously hate
yourself.
and so i sing
to the early morning risers with nowhere
to go
to the low income mothers
and the babies born into smoke and sweat
the forgotten people whose names
they don't even remember
the ugly and abused and hurt and near dead
and those who want to be.
much adieu to
all of the rats in dark places.

i nearly slip
climbing into my bed
my fingers grasp blindly for a cigarette
hidden somewhere
in the linen.
i feel my lungs shatter over and
again as i try to breathe
through my crying.
lone flies escape through the
cracks
how many times have i looked up
here? i think not enough
to be blind from the pain within me now
the ant crawls right up to the largest crack
sticking its little legs in
its tentative
this is a part of the world
it has forgotten that it knows
i imagine the ant is thinking
how he must decide
whether to stay on the plaster
or insert himself into the darkness.
i imagine myself as him too
whirling around
clinging to these pieces of my
life
i've known awhile now
my decision
so i take a last drag of my cigarette
put it out on my leg
a last time, near victorious
and insert myself
free and falling upwards
into the dark.