There was a hand
it used to be golden
but then it met hers
everything became tainted
like the ground she laid in

Anything, she said
I will draw the smoke
you will draw the big round eyes
she was in awe
the other just had to say the word

Let us be a little less dark
I’ll treat you kindly
I think you’re a depiction
of something i could love
when we get some warmer light

There is a hand
it used to be golden
but it paddled in blood
everything became tainted
like the ground she lays in.

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.