mercy throws open the windows
drops the key down the drain
scrubs the afterglow off until my skin is raw
red
I asked the snake if it always hurts like this


Always.

with you
it's like a game of freeze tag
every time you touch me
I stop in my tracks
and immediately
begin the slow process

of melting

My roommate did a juice cleanse
He looked and felt so good So I did the same.
Chugged nothing but holy water for a week. Left the water in the beam of the newmoon. Tried to flush the bad out of me. I asked my tired liver to do more. Tried fire. Tried sage. Tried charcoal. Tried swallowing stones in hopes they’d grind up what I couldn’t get rid of. Tried pulling my teeth out So my bite marks couldn’t be traced back to me
I wrote I WASNT HERE
in hopes even id believe it
but these are the hands that hit and smothered and signed
these are the lips that cut and lied

there was nothing to clean but my body
and even then I sometimes like the way I smell without soap

I am re learning faith in my own fingers
Leaps of it through my wrecked knees
Trust falls into myself

Chug chug chug. Drown drown drown.
the good and the bad mixed into a dark chocolate batter
tonight I eat the whole cake

When I am stressed I imagine I am a whale
In the middle of the blue ocean
I am not big - I am the perfect size
For a whale
I swim in water that does not fight me
My body was made for my home
I sing and it is always in chorus
I eat simple meals that nourish me completely
that I strain thru my gorgeous bristle teeth
I don’t own a toothbrush
Because I am a whale
I am fast but slow but moving at the exact pace I need to
I rest when I need to
I sing when I need to
I travel the globe and sometimes visit the beach not unlike people
It is my planet
and my planet is blue

I sit next to you
without
being close
And I can feel
my atoms start to pull towards you

Your gravity is stretching me open
Slow and steady and inevitable
the universe expanding

Man made fences
but with you
I am open pasture
Ever bigger ever green
Ever being

So I give my molecules permission
Every single one
To pull me apart

you said
"snow makes everything pretty"
so the second it started to get cold
I went outside and waited

Got stirred up to foam
trying so hard to dissolve
all the sweet
back into me