I am not.

And in that moment, an unquenchable rage all but consumed me. The innocence he once clung to exposed to nothing but the remnants of the child he believed himself to be. To his dismay, he was anything but. He knew with each minute elapsed I had been counting the times he glanced between my

eyes.

lips.

eyes.

lips again.

He knew because I was doing the same, and we were hungry.

Common tactic I would use to lure in the next one. With ease foregoing any pleasantries for conviviality. “Let’s be friends.” “I quite like you.” Holding his chin, eyes tilted downward and dark, closer than he knows I should be. He lets me do it, and the best part—He doesn’t have the slightest premonition that this is no two-player game.

I am feeding.

These were some of the idiomatic expressions I relied on to make of sweet fruit, my meal.

I was always hungry.

Since childhood there were signs I am sure many ignored either out of apathetic disconcern with my well-being or, perhaps, fear I lacked such capacity to change. Those who’ve past tried were lost on me; what silly nostrums…

I, for one, truly do believe it could not have been different. I have always been an animal trapped in cage. Gnawing bars and biting at hands. The one you end up having to shoot out back in the end. “Sorry.” “We tried.”

That’s quite alright.

I often feel as if I exist within oscillating abstractions of myself. Concepts rather than an absolute self. Not transcendental or opulent, nor omnipotent or anything of the sort. Just an experience. A show. Entertainment. That is what I am to my core. Don’t bother trying to pick me apart. I really am nothing, and I have got nothing to hide. Every question you ask I will have a different answer to. There is nothing to interpret, and I am certainly not lying. In that moment you are, for whatever intent and purposes, experiencing the real “me.” Whatever implications that may have, I concede. But for all you religious people. That is how I feel.

I’ve learned that I do feel a lot. The glass pane I am viewing you through is a mirror. I see what you want. What could make you happy. What could make you laugh. What could make you cry. And I arrange my muscles, and thoughts, and mien accordingly. This has made me very good at detecting emotions I like: fear, humiliation, lust, excitement. These are good because I understand them, and often I quite enjoy feeling them. Know that if anything at all,

I am intentional.

I harbor vigorous disdain for bravado, charisma, observance, or whatever other adjacencies that may scratch my mirror, or force my hand at engaging on a human level. I do not want to be human. I want to experience it. Do not interrupt me.

It vexes me.

I get angry a lot. No one around me would describe me as an angry person but I am angry a lot. I get angry when I am told what to do, when one might suggest I am making the wrong choices, when people are concerned. They don’t know me. They do not know that I am not one of them. I am watching you. You are simply a player in a game that I am hedging bets on. Manipulating, or at least trying to do so. There is no second “self” in the room with you. Whatever you see is you, you are naked, sitting in front of me. And I am watching the way your skin wrinkles, eyes squint, bones smell, the heat your body emits when I touch you, or make a joke, or divulge an insecurity you did not know you had. In a nice way of course.

I am nice.

The center of the party really. The main attraction. The bellowing operatic voice at the dinner table. The hand yielding pints of cider and inciting bouts of laughter. A smile or touch of a hand. Grazing your thigh or waist. It was not an accident. Nothing I do is. Think about it.

Think about it all night.

I quite enjoy the idea of strangers touching themselves to the idea of me. That is why I curate every aesthetic choice to their wildest fantasies. My “identity” is conditional, reliant on whatever you need. I am very careful with these choices as to not cause upset. Or confusion. I manage my choices clearly. When I don’t: I lie. This is one of the few foolish mistakes. I would say it is most likely my biggest fault. However, I care not to change it. It suits me. Or whatever you think “me” is.

Let me tell you something. People are stupid. Stupid and simple. And that is the **** best thing about them.

This is why I make minimal and careful choices about my appearance. I choose inoffensive and agreeable alterations, rather than rash, permanent ones. I like to slip in and out of each character, my wardrobe “happy place” of persuasion and deceit. Small tattoos, neutral hair color, unpainted nails, my characters are solid, good, approachable, and likeable. My biggest failure is misjudging my crowd and failing to launch. If they don’t like me, they will not fall in love with me. And I will have one less toy to break. Belligerent child screeches and I die again.

Do it better next time—

Try harder—

Bleed for your audience—

Slit your wrists and bow—

Standing ovation—

Scene.

he, the lone teleprompter,
it rings, the voice, still, silent
he calls, always, I answer

our minutes, then forbidden
by all, who grovel, hidden
alas- they won't take my love

serendipity, it drips
rose fingertips, and winter
it arrives, each time, too late

a ballad, perhaps essence
bittersweet recollections
who we were, your bruised children
who we are, long forgotten

intertwined, a shared thought
remember, how we forgot?

Salivate for boyhood
Satiate the ****** necrotic fantasies I spent 2009 stuck on
Give me waistband of your hips and the dips at which your thighs open wide
The unscathed version of you would be afraid
Be not afraid- boy- moan in pleasure
Let me measure how far my lips can reverberate against the parts of you no ones touched before

Let me be the spirit guide to an apartheid of beads of sweat
Let me take you to a place you’ve never been
I’ll be waiting next time.

Beg for me to get closer
To hurt while I peel away your insecurity until you’re dripping with serendipitous organic ******* ultraviolet shock
I want to see your body melt when I show you this world from which you’ve been deprived
I will be boy- and we will be man- and you’ll be collapsed under tents of silk while I keep going
I won’t stop for you
I know you’re crying from ecstasy- the drug of love
I shot you up. And now I can’t shut you up
We are wet bodies in locker room mirrors
All the fears of judgement are eminent
Not to the domain of their prejudice
But to the fact that
I want to devour you
Every inch of your glistening skin
In the palms of my hand, you’re not ready to begin but believe me, this is something I never want to end

How it smells like lust when I’m around you
And cups of coffee make like lint on days where my bones are rattling against yours
It takes all my strength to test how deeply I can house your body
Competing over every inch and acre that I can run my tongue along
The curves of your chest and collarbone the delicate withdrawn hiss you expel when I melt the stone wall you responsibly upheld


This boyhood
From new innocence it arises and it’s so beautiful to see you fall apart again
**** me, boy, until I see nothing but the future in your eyes.

I almost cried the second time her thigh grazed mine. The air shared between school girl fantasies of jump rope and freshly baked poppy seed cupcakes. Just enough to make me ponder whether the bounds of earthly consciousness were an object of her manipulation. And I, simply her willing subject.  

The oh too warm days on the side of the pool. The bright rays permeating the soft pretty pink promise of youth. Never delineating from the canvas of blue gray green tiger stripes I captured every time I looked up at her.

There were only feelings of nervousness, maybe a little anxiety. The feeling of a canary perched in its open top brass haven of beautiful imprisonment.

That’s what it was like being in love with Eloise.

Protrusions of the finest rose thorns. Strangulation by way of sweet, sweet cyanide. Dropping off the prepossessing coast of Amalfi.

I hoped that she too never stopped touching me, but I knew that a boy would come.

A boy would come to take me gentle Eloise away. To contort her limbs and fantasies of childlike innocence into rough boyhood.

Why should she try to keep up with him?

I was warm. I refuged her hollow bones as one does a migrant sparrow.

But like any kind thing, you must issue release. For the worlds most marvelous of things have no business being kept from displaying their beauty.

The way her feet curved and curled at my unsavory dispositions. The hugging of sandles by way of freckles and blue glitter dolphins.

I knew how I felt.

I knew because I had felt this way before.

Never daunting, or in bad taste. Not shamefully or with unrelenting dissatisfaction.

So how come she couldn’t do the same.

How come I’m left with camera film of beachy Saturday’s and coffee gelato. Of ripe succulent fruit. Her strawberry lip balm. Tire spokes peaking out of the side of mulberry bushes, and the space between our palms when her hands interlaced with mine.

And she’s left with none of me at all.

I carry the blood of many men
In my village, a stone cross stands on the coast of St Lunaire , an epitaph of men who didn’t made it back home


A chemist aids in the end of the next world war
And he’s smiling, writes a book for his first granddaughter to learn the measures of the worlds excellence
But stops halfway after losing control of half of his body
He now gargles clementines and white wine in a mouth that speaks none

My grandfather sings sea shanties in his office alone, from a tape, and it bellows
Those words are the only time I’ve heard him form a sentence in 5 years

The soul has a funny way of reminding us where we came from

I carry the blood of many men
My father comes to this country seeking redemption for potential potentially lost
And through slurries of slurs and unmarked lost words
Builds an empire of wine and gin and ***

He is alone, but when we dance as a child I can see how his steps are just a lineage strewn from my own
Edith piath and Celine dion course through a heart too heavy for his own good
But he loves all like a baker his bread on Sunday morning
Takes it home and breaks it apart for his daughters and son

The soul has a funny way of reminding us where we came from

Sometimes
On a dimly lit sunday morning
When the dew sets gleefully on wildflower and freshly sprung grass
And the only sound that surrounds me in the faint whistle of a tea kettle, over a lit stove
I am a girl

A girl in the way that pancakes rise over and fall at the suggestion of arrival
And boysenberry jam meets the corner of a mouth

A girl like the bright pink lips that swallow them
A g irl in the way skipping sounds on wet concrete
Primary affairs and linoleum hallways,
Like green braces and familiar places
Beads, wooden and plastic, letters pool on desks and tie friendships together for lifetimes

A girl in the arms of a father

Sometimes I feel like a girl in prepubescent rage
In shouting the lyrics along with the radio
In liking a boy so much that my pride eats me and spits me out
In the way I check under my bed for monsters at night

Sometimes the girl is scared and gazes up at the stars and recants constellations, all by the wrong names, and like clockwork, rises and spins around with open arms in the deep blue

A girl like a rose petal falling on a lost lovers cheek
Like a locker filled with sticky notes
Like magnets on a fridge
And fresh oranges on the kitchenette
Like a bandana wrapped around a pale neck
Like hickies the day before a big test

Like the crackle of a patchouli candle
Like reading past bedtime

Like Jane ******* eyre.
Like teenage angst
And “mother you just don’t get me”
Like Sylvia Plath and a Taylor swift chorus
Like Heart break
First kisses in a cafeteria to a boy named Jeremy
Or Josh
It doesn’t matter what his name is
But it did once

Knives cleave open my shoulder blades and tears stain my face
And the dog in my rib cage rip apart ego
Peels me apart
And plasters me back together again.


I have felt like a girl before
But the parts that make me one pale in comparison to what girlhood feels like
I have been a girl
And the girl is still here
Watching
Waiting
For the last cookie in the cookie jar