Once I killed a butterfly.
It was white like lace I could
see through every line
of the hand I trapped it in.
And to here, I sit and wonder
if that is the movement
that made my life so unsolvable.
So little, so monstrous
and not like lace myself at all.

I feel the blow to the chest
the psychosomatic burn
of the candles they’ll light
sending me off, their last goodbyes.
The resuscitation,
getting me through limbo,
back into life and out once more.
It’s all starry now
and I’m glad I stayed out.

My phantom mother
isn’t scary at all.
She lessens the fight,
bewitches light.
There’s so many things
I wish I could say
as we lay in our hurt
and every time she leaves
this earth
I hold myself
pretending that it’s her.

We get lost in what we can’t undo.
She came in day after day
but you can’t mend a broken body.
Sure, there was joy
you see the ones that you love
and you can’t turn away.
But you can’t mend a broken body.
I am only telling, I didn’t see.
She was nine years old,
now she is a woman
and so I see her resilience,
a most beautiful strength that
I once thought of having
but we can’t all be as strong.
She didn’t take her first job,
it was too little.
There was a bigger voice
to be heard, to be loved, to be sang
and she embodies that.
Her face is not to be touched,
her skin is not to be labelled.
Don’t get that get lost in this,
let it be heard.

Hold me in your eyes,
glassy and predictable
The way that you feel
it’s lamentable.

It escapes you
in the rainfall of your mouth
that says many things
but nothing really comes out.

You know what you want
but there’s pain
and you’re not the kind
to take someone’s life away.

Except your own.

If I had to live without you
there would only be blue light
crowding my space
where you should be like
downcast stars
and manifesting scars.
only a way out for us would be
my salvation.

With red raw eyes,
i’m not crying
in some pretty orange
hue that i look
baby in.
I’m figuring out
how to hide my wrists
and how i can resist
joining you
again.