the morning sky spits milk at me
and hungry ghosts lap it up
i boil my sheets for breakfast
my eyes still swimming
in last nights lucid dream
where birds sang holes in my head
and their sickly sweet music
ran down my neck in globs
like egg yolk or menstrual blood
saw you in the garden pulling weeds
leaving out our babies for the buzzards
i touched one and it turned to ash

my breast swells with sour milk
to feed what could have been
stillborn babies curdled in blood
with white roses in their eyes
too heavy a burden to bear
i spill the milk that weighs me down
it comes out in chunks like *****
for the maggots to drink
that cling to my rotted soul
lip splits in memory of your needy teeth
your ghost leaves fingerprints on my neck
like a strand of prayer beads pulled too tight
a dead dog barks and curls around my feet
and starts to decompose

i lie awake and chart stars on my ceiling
in my head is a picture of an autistic boy
drowning kittens in the creek behind his house
in southern illinois where my father was from
and little girls left in poppy fields
covered in pollen for the bees to collect
and what do you say to the dead girl
when she complains that she is haunted
and what to do when you feel your bones creak
like a floorboard in the house that you grew up in
and the poison you ****** from his wounds
sits in your stomach like lead weight
tied to a kittens neck and thrown into the river