I scraped the skin from the mannequin I made of myself.
Beginning to graft it back onto my slippery insides.
Numb and dry,
While everyone politely admired my outsides,
carefully poised behind the glass of my storefront window.
Reaaranged and redisplayed to fit the scene and season.
But I dumped my bucket of innards on my crusty bones and as my skin grabs hold-
It hurts like a sonuvabitch.
Have I died?!
And if I've died, who is this frankenstein rising up from inside?
Will she be kind to me?
Will she wash the matted dirt from my hair, and kiss the smelly flesh of the hands that put me back together?
Will she tell me goodmorning, and tuck me in safe at night?
Will she listen to my heartache when it's 3 AM and the rest of the world is in deep slumber, unaware of the pain of the observer?
Will she love me better than the one before?
Together we've cross stitched a body that looks like a girl we used to know-
So tender and red with a long way to go.
Her hand is left, my hand is right-
We grab tight,
fall to our knees,
and thank the GOD WITHIN
for bringing us back to life.

I’ve hung around too many open bars,
Took a pre game a little too far-
Looking for one more shot.
A shot through my own foot.  
Shot to pieces- shocked.
Tell me, is it a shot in the dark,
to ask for your heart,
one more time?
All the shots I’ve shot before cinged my insides,
Leaving me warm,
For a time.
But when I drink you in,
I burn in all the ways I searched for at the bottom of the bottle.
I’m sorry I forgot,
loves a long shot,
Not,
For the short sighted.
No quick fix,
But I’d rather shoot the ****,
Than shoot the shot that landed me here in the first place.
With a birds eye view,
I’d rather be at home with you.
But a birds eye shot has filleted my insides,
Openly sifting for all the things I despise,
about myself,
to excavate and place on display as a target on my back,
And I’m asking you to take the long shot,
Across the chasm I created.
All I’m looking for,
Is one more shot.

If love is to gold;
Your hands are to Midas.
In a pan of penne pasta,
Or sizzling out a fresh cracked la croix.
Touched my tummy,
Full of gold, Midas nurtured safety.
Don’t worry bubble guts,
Take a whipper for love.
Plunge, jump, reach,
go ahead,
Fall.
Into my pile of blankets on my sheepskin rug.
Share in ecstasy of being witnessed,
I call you to the stand!
In 1803 where we both reached for the same mango.
I loved that bodega, in that other life, where our souls crossed paths that last time.
Or so I can imagine.

"coward" slips through your furrowed lips,
dripping with disdain.
I don't blame,
you for it.
It stings still,
the way only truth can.
It clings to my mucked-up mind,
filthy with guilt and shame.
Again, I don't blame,
you for it.
Did Mr. Hyde face the consequences of Dr. Jekyll?
I'm Mr. Hide.
Can't two face, my mistakes.

Let me love you! Let me delicately ****** you into enlightenment.
I promise you'll like the way the lights lick my jaw line,
speaking- sharp and pointed.
BANG BANG BANG-
I knock harder at the pearly gates of Hell.
I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW MY TRUTHS!
What truths?
The truths that tumble from your mouth half thought through?
The truths that are untouched, unused, turned to dust, and kicked up by your own dumb shoes?

Can I cry yet?
Leering behind my eyes, down my throat,
falling to my feet, filling me.
Heavy,
I can't pick myself up,
Legs like cinderblocks.
I have to keep moving.
Things to do,
People to see,
Obligations to keep.
Don’t hug me too long,
Don’t squeeze me too hard,
For fear it all comes bursting out.
The levy might not hold!
Don’t look me in the eyes.
Don’t gently stroke my hand.
Don’t say something soft.
Don’t dare penetrate.
For even the smallest of cracks might send these salty waves over the estuary edge.
I must wait.
Alone/alone/alone.
Wait to be alone.
Wait.
Weight.
Don’t share the weight.
When you’re in the shower maybe then you can cry.
Convince yourself it’s just the bath water running down your face.
Not a break.
Just a momentary escape.
A little crack in the ****.
I have to hold it in.
The big wave hasn’t crested.
If you let it out a little bit at a time-

Time
Time
Time
Just a little more time.

- maybe it won’t hurt so much when it all comes bursting through, shatter me,
to pieces.
How will I recover? Who will I be? Who am I now carrying around this grief? How will I survive?
The reaper comes for us all.

Hot magma grief crawling up my throat, spews out my mountaintop.
Slow motion consumption,
smoldering lava of sorrow breathing for the first time.
gasp
for
air
A world of color turned soot soaked black.
Submission, there is none.
No rest for the wicked or the anguished.
Unhurriedly and deliberately,
obliterated.


Everythingmovesinslowmotion.
Yourworldstops
all else carries on.
Anditdoesn’tmakesense
What lays in the wake of grief?

Disrespectfully silent.
For such a geography shifting event.

You may beg,
plead,
wrought to your knees,


The landscape of my heart vast,
The volcanic mass of grief left behind something inside,
What?
  
Melancholy ash.
Birthed of lava.
Agony.
Anguish.
Gloom and
Purgatory.
Heavy in my chest.

Holy Tribulation.
Despondent.
Dejected.
We're in hot water now,
Boiled in a breath uncaught.
distraught.
Third degree, cremated.
Solomons wife.

Enraged.
Incinerated.
Vexed.
Unyielding.

A kind hand cauterizes my weeping wounds only for a moment.