I should love you as an eight year old,
asking to be excused from your third grade class
to go throw up in the bathroom.
Leaning over your desk in fevered prayer,
hunched over two tender nubs of breast.
Sitting down with your counselor
and a pack of giggling girls to have “the talk”
while bleeding into a *** of toilet paper.

I should love you as a twelve year old,
blue eyes lined and lipstick smudged.
Crouched behind the bushes, expelling chunks
of non-digested pizza and coke.
Taking two bottles of tylenol and laying down
on your kitchen floor, watching the broiler burn.
Calling your boyfriend, and whispering
so your mom won’t hear
“I love you, I hate you, don’t go, leave me to die”

I should love you as a fourteen year old,
thin as a pencil, hair black and straight
Walking with a humming in your head
to your eighth grade classes, slipping away
to the library and reading books on dying
and so you steal a bottle of ativan
from your grandfather’s medicine cabinet.
You take 10.

I should love you as you are now.
Seventeen, eyes darkened to a jade,
and burnt out on suicide attempts.

But I don’t.

my eyes are gardenias
blooming mid february
the nights swallow me whole
i eat like mad
and write like mad
smoking out a bathroom window
ghosts in the mirrors
spiced *** in the pantry
i unplug the telephone
and set fire to my backyard
the ashes look like snow
and make me cough

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

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

I climb up onto the roof of your car,
take off my shirt, and howl at the moon.
And you look at me with those weird eyes.
I pawned all my stuff for those pretty flowers
that bloom inside me when youre around.
And that sticky spot on the bedspread,
that I lap up like sour milk.
And I will make you pure like me,
eat the garbage from your entrails,
put your blood in dialysis bags,
And I'll put on my seal skin and crawl under you,
but you will remain a skeleton,
my salt lick lover,
and we will make our bed on the banks of the river.
We’ll lay around and get drunk
and youll laugh at all my jokes
while tiny bugs gnaw at my feet.

I died when I was nine,
pickled in cancer I floated.
You kept me on the shelf,
next to the salt and pepper,
curdled in my own tears.
My pores weep strange poisons;
flies eat away my face
because you never buried me.
Ive been watching you.
I will boil roots inside of you
and become a child again.

My body is a bee hive
and my brain is the queen,
fertile and made fat from
the little bugs inside of her.
My ears are stuffed
with soft cotton *****,
and my skin is made with
the flesh from an apple.
And I am pure like the moon,
homesick for the pinkness
that lives inside you.
I am ripe and flowering.
As I rot, you swallow my remains.

made my body out of birds
found in the kitchen sink
all sad and smothered
drowned in the milk from my cereal
and when you came inside me
you could hear them singing
and some odd months later
half ghost as i lay beside you
i heard you hum that sweet song in your sleep
and felt my chest become a birdcage
ribs whistling like whale bones
i opened up and ****** you in
to sing to me forever

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

im frozen, in June
left for numb
from this reverie
a silent movie
of blues and greys
a painted picture
of icy stares
and cold blood.
there is a silent front
over i-430
the world is made of breaking ice
and broken people
body temp dropping
85.9
stripped down to cellular
i can feel myself slowing
eyes bloom yellow
clinical death

Spreading ***** on toast in the morning,
and too cold coffee in a cracked cup.
I brush my hair back and my eyes go with it,
leaving empty sockets where my soul used to be.
The morning newspaper speaks to me,
Every word is your obituary.
It turns to dark yellow dust in my hands.
Our apartment is my asylum.
It's a house of mirrors, sewn from your old skin.
When I touch the walls, they sting like stovetops.
Your burnt remains season my dinner;
Iced tea sweetened with your ashes.
I hear a hole in my stomach whispering,
I tried to swallow grief but instead it swallowed me.

my organs are scattered in this room
amongst the plastic stars on my ceiling
this house is diseased and quiet
sighing with every step i take so
i slip into the backyard with a cigarette
nooses hang where a swing once sat
i see a dead man dangle from the rope
my pupils are ink stains on my eyes
and the pen scribbled lyrics on my flesh
becomes a cancer and consumes me
i cut chunks of meat from my arm
and feed them to the dog

my room smells like stale cigarettes
a bunch of wilted flowers on my bedside
and so i lay them over your grave
in the cemetery where my thoughts go to die
the lazy afternoon ***** with jim morrison
and pete townsend watching us from the walls
jars of ***** collecting in my closet because
im still throwing up the milk i ****** from you
when i was still a child and you were a man
when you took your coffee black
and mine was almost white in comparison

your boxers were on my floor this morning
i call you and pretend to leave a message
how you must have forgot them in your hurry
to dress and leave before my mother woke up
after i snuck you in my window last night
when in reality they've been sitting there for months
collecting dust because i am afraid to touch them,
to remember where i've touched them and you before
because in reality you are feverish with contempt
scowling at the syllables that form my name

it rained this morning
although it felt more like the sky was dripping with distain
i smoke my cigarette and make my way into the kitchen
the hum takes over and i grab a cereal box, a loaf of bread
overflowing spoonfuls of peanut butter and begin eating
sickened with myself and you and what we are
and what we're not and what we could be if you'd only let us
and suddenly im in the bathroom with the water running
i hear the beat of my heart in my head
he will never love you

i waded through your sickness
with ***** up to my waist
and found you praying on your bed
belly full of my breast milk
we shed our clothing and i cried for you
you ****** the life blood out of me
through the bruises on my neck
and when you slid out for the last time
i felt your soul leave with it
and for all the time i spent carrying you
i sprained my wrists under the strain of your sadness
my back broke from your weight on my shoulders
now youre dead and my body still aches

you said you got all new sheets
and there were new stains on them
and then proceeded to nod your head
towards the woods behind the building
and im an old dog at your feet
crippled and crawling behind you
with holes in the knees of my jeans
a cigarette in the corner of my mouth
i watched you throw up blood in the sink
and cough like a man twice your age
i went home and wrote something beautiful
and tried to pretend you werent dying

rip out your womb and pickle it
take two bites from an apple and throw it away
buzz your head and paint sigils on your skull
light a candle and leave it burning
set fire to your childhood home
dont eat any pomegranate seeds
so you’ll never have to come back
drill holes in your body and fill them with steel
eat an entire chocolate cake and puke
become a ****** and rob your clients
drink ***** until you can’t see
light a match
and swallow it