Do all people find ways to torture themselves?
We could have colors
and blindness
stacked on our shelves

but we are keen,
enigmatic,
and desperately mean.

lay off the Pause button and I'll Play
the string of
your harp
that nobody else knew how to start
You're ******* welcome,
I'm glad you see I tried,
never did I imagine they'd ignore me when I
cried, or when I
stretched out my hand
for love instead of admiration
comfort instead of more opinions of their conceptualization
of my place in our ***** swarm of civilization

it doesn't mean a thing to be complimented
when you want more than recognition

Nightmares
You are still just
a flash or a scream.
The feeling of losing

my hold
on someone slippery,
for something fleeting

As a young girl, I suspected it:
the carnage of night
Who could have warned me?
How quickly I lost sight
of my role in a cuter world,
holding the brightest light, the guardian
devil, bring me back
to that old familiar cage fight

There are layers of stories within me
peeled back subconsciously where our
atmosphere can contact

It's getting close to a vein
my eyes go skipping over every sound
I'm panicking right now
intensive restructuring
I have lost my way

Vulnerable to pressure
and lonely
Desperate for a push
bologna
I feel so dangerous

I want to love
the warmth of your fire
I bet it feels good
to burn and burn away
Dissipate into ashy air
will you hold me higher
for now? I'm soft I heal quickly I don't disobey
the shear when
it creeps in too far. I get happier
when I find my own stars
I get angrier
when coach scrutinizes my arms

No amount of emotion will bring me closer to life
No color speaks to me
like the bright pigment
from my knuckles
in the corners of my cuticles
over these thighs and ankles

we are only alive briefly
thank god

I reached my arms out as nets in the sea
Said I was prepared to love what was in front of me
     (but I only liked to look at artistry.)
And I should've known that colors wouldn't be enough
The coral in my palms proved that life was always rough
I tried to apologize but they were already stuck in
Weighted like rainbows beneath my soft salty skin

Before I gave up I looked back at the blue
Filled with invertebrates that were nothing like you
And I knew what the plan was, to look again and to try
But by that time the coral were digging into my eye
So you see? It's uncomfortable, I was already hurt
I don't let anything infect my blood with dirt

That's always my excuse, I play it off way prettier
In purgatory they'll ask how I got even dirtier
Because I must look so clean while I feel so mean
Wanting to believe we are all ******* boring

But it can't be true.
Coral is beautiful and alive and every piece is new
But I could never enjoy it  
I'm the coral inside of you

Your fingers are on my throat
   the world is rocking like a boat
an ocean
is unbearable
because it never seems to end
   and all I can do is float

   Your lips are rosebuds that never stop moving
   and somehow I find my own disgust soothing
my fingertips
are numb
whenever I lose myself to the waves
   but you're deaf so I'm unsure what I'm proving

   Your move was the deadly spawn of knight
   I sacrificed my pawn, paralyzed by fright
we will protect
the king
from sicknesses like you, *******
   Checkmate. I never lose a single fight.

sometimes I think I picked you right up
an unexpected hobby
a book not from the library
the scariest soundtrack

sometimes I think you're a deliberate distraction
if you helped
if you stayed confused
if you didn't want that

sometimes we duel like sun and moon
Just let her be, just let me roam.
Just let us dance in our fancy pants.

sometimes I hate you
(I just hate loving you.)
Sometimes I hate you
(I just hate hurting you.)

sometimes for you, it
must seem like something of a bore.
You said it all feels
exactly the last time, just before.

the dark, dark, paralyzed shark
pincushioned a hole in the wall
and said, "remind me. why do we do it all?"
grief is a shiny stairway to ******
showering in syrupy Butalin
i'm so angry at these bad dreams
where did all the good ones go?
i'll never be near the moon, it seems.
i'll always be in my mind, trapped below
that **** who hides
in my teeth and in my skin
lurking trickily where the deepest sin collides
ordering me, ruthlessly: give in

i carry a ghost in my pocket
i can open it up like a deadly locket
revealing it as a helpless demon
ready for the routine depository
of its *****
does it need a piggyback ride
to our castle of ice and pine?
does it want to make its home
in my belly, my nails, my womb?

Someone call an EMT
who will scrape out the rut for me
a few good cleanings,
that's what I need
to finally put away
that black poppy seed
for long enough to try
using my voice at least once
before i get to die.

it will cackle with joy
if my heart suddenly fails.
i will omit all cholesterol
if that's what its punishment entails.
there's such a thin line between inspiration
and replication.
maybe life is meant to be tired
and this shape is all these continents will ever be.

i'm learning to fly
i come and go.
i float and grow.
beating my wings to a rhythm that I breathe in and out-
it sounds exactly like
a quick heartbeat
preying on rabbits and resting in trees
instead of running
becoming dead meat

i'm very good at hiding
i keep it up until I'm as hollow
as lightweight opaque
translucent paper
knowing it can't wait me out forever.
if i could plague it with apprehension
i'd follow him everywhere
and lie about my intentions
until he casually cheats life and leaves me
Here

i imagine there to be a sound of these wooden flutes
fluttering
white flakes by my eardrum
spiriting my shaking fingers
giving me an excuse for the palpitations
rising at the thought of my aggressor
placed inside my flower drawer.

maybe it is my undulating fright
maybe it is cardiovascular might
maybe it is a measurable blight
because i feel stuck in a daydream that steals my hair
and, with a wrenching force, my underwear
using the two to gag me with pressure.

then i wake up
in time, completely alone.
a window is glued under my eyelids
of a time
when I could part my lips on my own

my story starts in North Carolina morning at 5:32
where I was excavated from my mother's womb
2 weeks past due
and immediately taken to an emergency room
because of a minor disfigurement called
ulnar polydactyly
where they laid me down and cut flesh & bone away

value your days and spin on a tire
at the bottom of a tree, twist the rope.
cut away any fray and pickle your desire
it's not a noose, it's not your hope.

i was born differently than peaks explained
i was told medical bills were a blessing obtained
so that my fingers would not continue to grow
so that fortunately, none of us will ever know
where those bitty bits would want to go
where would I go?
if I hadn't been bound
by what I hadn't contained?

how do parents agree to cosmetic surgery on their newborns?

don't they feel sick?

when my mother explained why i had these scars
She didn't ask how they felt on my hands.
and when my father kissed the bumps crunched on cars
He insisted that I had intact, normal, nerve strands.
But I could feel phantom fingers
and devil horns

don't they feel sick?

now I spend every day
chewing all the rest away
Now I count months and men
Men, who will cut their brood out of their only mate
to slice off any disfigurements and hold its jaw in place
then ball those hands in fists so her fingers can rest in peace

please
Listen when I ask for help
don't Give up on my body, just
cut the hearts of those playing God, for
anything Or anyone can happen to a newborn child, or
else, not again, it's
off, not again, not
today, not again.

I'm 6 years old, alone and terribly
glad to be awake
free of the villain that I’d been
free to make
Chunky animated evil clouds and monsters
with human names
mistrusting my family from the
earliest days
imagining my parents were zipped up
in skin resembling mine
their starchy air force uniforms
finding me everytime
Then my baby brother was on time, cooked just right,
born perfectly
When I found out about his circumcision I stopped
feeling sisterly

Why were my sweet, placid parents so surprised by us?
Keeping their secrets and distance from us.
Give us the answers, show us history!
why take me to Sunday School if you
won't sit through all of it with me?

there is nothing more disturbing than weekly church hopping.
there is so much to fear if we do not plan on ever stopping.
when I look for friends
i do so excitedly
looking for their ailments
and finger ******.
wondering who else
is in horror
of their size,
of their capacity.

"Look at these baby spiders in our garden,
Look, momma. They're so tiny.
The pumpkin nearly squished-
There's a centipede!" I'd be whining.
But, oh,
It's gross. I hear "eww" and "oh my god" and
"throw it away, bugs belong outside!"
I can do that. We all belong outside. I can do that.

From Santa Monica to Rapid City
I turned 8 and avoided depression
I plagued every single bookstore with
my ridiculous obsession:
ecology
Tornadoes, forests, food chains and chemistry
already fascinated me

I loved that;
the atmosphere of creation.
Shapes alive
with Movement and
centrifugal Force,
stopping motion, Pressure,
inertia and Speed.

I studied
legs. I watched the
long propelling jumpers, the
tool-like structures, of
insect tarsal claws, and
the spurs like knives.

Then aquatic mammals came to me
Where I first learned about ***:
the whale's hip bone, a mystery.
To the history of earth, it was
Big males, powerful females.
and evolution seemed to be the cause.

Then arboreal anthropods,
Where I first asked about distribution,
toes and fingers,
and counted
on hand
the numbers
and suddenly
deplored extinction.

It was a hot knife in my belly that never went away
I want to ask their god all the questions that besot me
why did they agree (twice!) to cut away that which is not rotting?
If DNA is best selected among genetic diversity, why must we all look and feel the same?
Blanching at any difference, hating on new names.

is it such a disaster
to expect variation from your master?
why are 2 extra phalanges
such ******* calamities?
Why do we observe differences
as an excuse to mutilate newborn babies?
Americans slice ******* off intact baby boys
Americans slice ******* off intact baby boys

A doctor deemed my extensions useless
but left me my brain and heart
which began to terrorize me
from the very simple start

I dreamed of all of us:
scary islands with giant magical
flowering
who was poisonous
to the population of anyone and
anything
who was dangerous
printing off the battle plan which was
escaping
Yes, I dreamed of all of us