How can every word
   Whizzing around my head
Be the exact words
    I could never use
To describe
                                                                                                          My existence?

"And in a funny way, the shaving of my, uh, head has been a liberation from, uh, a lot of, uh, stupid vanities really. Uh, it has simplified everything for me, it has opened a lot of doors maybe." - Stephen Malkmus, Jo Jo's Jacket

the first layer of skin i shed
was the bra

rid of the foreign metal sculptor producing a deep rift between skin
my third eye, swallowing gazes

rid of my **** , my ***** , my rack
replaced with sacks of fat and nerve and milk ducts
hanging, existing, for no one else
not even myself

the second layer of skin was the painting of the face
the concealing and erasing of imperfections, the lines of laughter of sorrow of life
redirecting attention and importance to the bow and symmetry of the lip

no longer did i have to put myself on in the morning
i woke up as i was, as i needed to be,
bare and uninhibited

my skin now breathed, and for no one else
not even myself

and then i grew another layer of skin,
made of dank tangles to protect my age,
i stopped shaving the years i'd walked this earth, shedding my womanhood

the skin grew to my armpits, little tufts of sweaty, odorous mother nature dozing in a fleshy convex nest

and to my legs, were the tangles wrapped around my ankles
preventing the spreading of the legs for every life
for not every life wanted what was not tame
and what was not tame no longer wanted to be.

my body did not conform,
for it was not brought into this world to be consumed for the pleasure of others

it exists for no one else,
not even myself

and as i was engulfed in this hairy wonder of my own body
i shed the last layer,
the shaving of the head

my brain, my being breathed
porous and exposed
vulnerable to weather and whispers

but i was all at once naked and calm,
having finally peeled away the layers of ***** over-sexualization and constrained femininity that had molded this meat sack that serves me,
a bundle of circuitry and solution balancing and bobbing on the neck

for i exist for no one else,
only myself

There’s something wretched about the way you move
Maybe it’s the distorted curve of your spine
Or the ghastly shade of pale that we all share
Better yet, maybe it’s the way you thrive from burying all those with an ounce of light within them

That’s all wrong, though; what really bothers me
is that you remind me of myself
not too long ago- not long ago at all

Dancing before my eyes, is the mirage of perfection.
I reach for it and it slips through my fingers.
My therapist says I am grieving – and how can I stop?
Change tears me from my foundations, again and again.
And each time is like sandpaper on my skin;
new faces mix with old fears in a nauseating pattern.
They say home is not a place, but a feeling of security,
and so, I cannot go home.
Once I had a home in a bitterness of a girl, with eyes like autumn leaves.
That home kept me sharp and angry, as I had always been. But it is not such a torment, when one is not angry alone.

/Here there lies a girl, auburn hair and eyes of molten autumn.
She wanted to burn the world.
Moth to her flame, I followed her to the end of the earth.
And watched as she burnt herself to cinders./

Long after that home deserted me, I found another. This time I fostered myself among a merry band of misfits. At the zenith of this period of home, I found myself entirely humanized, with unfamiliar stirrings of contentment. But, as that home drew to a close – in both place and security, again rose the familiar stirrings of dread.

My trepidation was not misplaced.

Like a reluctant Dorothy, I was plucked from my home by the unforgiving storm of time. My newfangled humanity proved an acute vulnerability. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. And so, the old bitterness and broken humanity mixed like acid in my blood, leaving a feeble and faithless girl.

It is enough to make one wonder if it’s worth it – to have loved and lost.

I feel as if something has been stolen from me, fate some cruel and callous thief to let me believe in any of it,
to give the pretence of meaning to my meandering life and tear me to pieces with the temptation.

I understand why we become destroyers –
is that a line I too, will cross?

We so wish and dream to be heroes and precious friends, only to be cast out into the wasting and hungry world – full of monsters.

I see, I see how easy it would be, to MAKE it stop.

I swore I would not be a monster – if only so as not to validate the harms monsters have done me.

But if I am to be devoured either way,
have I enough soul left to believe
that
promise
mattered?

I am a blank
A space between words
That airless void
Of wingless birds

I am a vacant gaze
married to a vapid poise
Threadbare sighs
Eclipsing noise

Expiring dust as
I meander through a mesh of white washed walls
Empty corridors
And ashen floors

I am a limbo
A platitude of muted grey
A limp film of rust
flattening the fray

I am a milk-and-water puddle
Of sunken skin
I can’t care for a world
Which I’m no longer in

sheen spreads from
light blue paranoia—a rainbow,
tough magical, slippery, and krilled

to enter all but my mouth would seem ungrateful

rain, lighthouse, big money,
and the shade of fish approaching

the rope
now shredded, wet braids
to loosen and snap swatched opal
peeping, peering, ripping larger
with the rifted water

and so goes slicing red