When I was ten,
It didn't matter that my legs weren't hairless;
I was just a girl -
It was shameless.

That was the year it all ended,
And suddenly,
I was supposed to be a woman.
Suddenly my legs
And all the spaces in between
Weren't mine, but his.

When I turned fifteen,
I thought he wanted my new hairless legs;
I thought being a woman
Would make him love me
And the woman I was going to be.
But I was a girl.
I was shameless.

And it was easy to pretend I wanted it,
Easy to pretend that I wanted what hurt.
It was easy,
It was shameless,
Until I was crying on the bathroom floor,
Missing a period.

And that was just the thing -
That my own blood was a sin.
I couldn't bleed,
Because being a woman was wrong.
And I thought that's what he wanted,
I thought that's what he wanted all along.

He wanted me to be a woman
When it was his hands on my thighs,
His hands on my waist,
His hands covering my eyes.

He wanted me to be a woman until I was:
Until I had hair on my legs
And all the spaces in between.
And suddenly I was supposed to be ten,
I was supposed to be a girl,
I was supposed to be shameless.

I wasn't a woman;
I was small.
I was young.
And it hurt.

As I near twenty years,
I think of being ten,
I think of being fifteen,
And I feel no different.
I'm still small,
I still curl up on my bedroom floor.
I still have pink walls
And red painted toes
Because I'm a girl,
And that's the worst of it all.

oracle of sound
emotions deepening
ochre filaments
dark enchantment
summer shore.

I feel like a folded symbol,
inside the chipped-cherry boxcar
that is my damp, June mind.

A fetus seizing in the womb,
hooked up like a cheap monitor.
A foreign strandedness, wrapped
by a boa of dark country back roads
and sterile air skipping across grass.

If I stop, If I sleep
the sweat seeps from my pores
like a sterling grey squad,
oxidizing in the fog,
swimming around headspace,
guns melting with claymation cheeks,
howls into the night, darling deadbirds.

I am now happy and remember
only other happy memories.
Over a decade of depression
and now this.

I feel unfinished, unwanted
by the quickness of life.
I feel like a grain
caught in a gust so swift,
I may never adjust.

I, the empty-headed boy,
causing jet-black glass
to appear on sand,
to remove my footprints,
and incase them, phantoms.

Tobacco tar
stuck like the scars
from my tattoos:

pain elective
and
permanent

like we like the
mimetic representational
citations of Bryson Tiller
and Drake,

what hails so merrily
your unsaid name?

your cave was a pasture-
far beyond rugs made of the softest fabric skin could feel,
far along field of comfort resting in my arms.
oxygen just never seemed to make sense,
in scarcity.
stairs were just never worth the effort,
labor always coinciding with
disparity
and
nothing was ever clear.
you were as clear as the looking glass we have either all seen or will see when reality becomes as transparent as our minds wish it not to be,
so that we can wish it to be so.

I hope what I see is a dream where I can be
me,
wearing all of my skin, including
shards that you
took.

Well well well sailor
Tucked the gun back into your pants
Panting all overcome
With obsessive you don't know what
Here I am the future mermaid
Isn't it where the drowned go if heaven spits them out?
Don't know if they'd accept.
Cheers to you frightened
Never a complete silence in the open sea
Sing yourself a song of solitude
Next time you wish to put me back in place
Where you belong
With your fear of stupidity.
Or maybe... Maybe I won't leave
Yes, I probably won't
I tried once or twice before.
Alter ego is not for me to choose
My doppelgänger gangsta crazy beach.
So please, if you decide to have a snack
Out of my good intentions
May I suggest pickling?
So it may last you through lifetime
Of self imposed misery.
Add lemon so it's not too fishy
And salt generously with your f...ng tears

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