i dont like lines like "i feel empty,"
"I am nothing"

but it's hard to describe the world from behind a thick-gray veil ,
peeking out, hands incapable of parting
those layers of gossamer

without reverting to the pithies i garnered
from young, only-just-realizing-angst

small glimmers of light or dusky shadows
pass across my roughly shielded eyes
sometimes,
for moments

my hands are not mine
my feet are not mine
I can't tell who
that hairy, unkempt,
ball-of-fat person is
glaring at me from behind the mirror,
the thick threads

someone else
has been sleeping
in my bed

someone else
has been writing
my tweets

someone else
has been
driving my car

i'm in limbo and i'd
much rather be
totally gone than in wait, wait, wait
for the day i wake up and
realize all They--

the person who stole my skin--

has done to hurt
the ones i love--

It will end badly
I know it will
I know it will
I know it will
*I know it will.

We are hollow—
not vessels, not bottles under the tap--
Not empty-to-be-filled;
we’re empty-to-be-empty;
those shriveled dried egg pods

you find on the beach,
never meant to hold more
than the potential for a full-grown skate.
Souls were there once, but they died
quickly after we emerged from our casings.

You aren’t sad—
you’re hollow, and I do not infuse
your shell with the warmness I
feel for you, a shell topped off with empty,
any more than a dry cup

can love itself to fullness.  
My fat arms will never be able
to trade their misplaced heat with you;
How hilarious to picture empty eggshells
walking around town, watching tv,

driving to work or, most ridiculously, feeling,
or attempting to mesh their bodies together.
How laughable, you hollow thing, to think that
our egg-thin forms could warmly interlock.
Why, you’d crack in half—you’d splinter—

and not yolk, no no, nothing so concrete, but
merely the memory of yolk would spill
out, ooze out,

get under my dry crevices, and make
my aridness
a lie.

I wonder if other people see death like I do.
I do not mean in a faux-macabre way,
a sad tween way.
Picking through the 3 isles of candies at
Speedway, I sometimes catch
a whiff of
death and
I don’t mean to, but I know that
my eyes must fill with him &
I wonder if the cashier
sees
anything,
,

Have you caught the glimmer
of an adult-to-be coming to terms
with the conflicting emotions
around death,
the desire, the fear,
the terror after horror,
the longing that subsides only
with time

a world
of nostalgic
facsimiles.
i met someone

who looked
like you.
She looked at me

with the same eyes
you used to,

the cruel mix between
devil-may-care
and miserable.

searching vain, searching
ridiculous,
I make a joke of myself--

remember
the time
I bought a
scruffy looking
black mouse

from a pet store
at whim

to replace the one that died
when I
was 6

but I can hardly replace you
with this pale
stranger

but i can hardly lay
your own few-ounce body
to rest

I am not who I think I am—
I never said I was

Sometimes I’m
a monster—
swirling, yellowgreen skin,
bristly coils of
hair sticking
out,

strumlike underneath
your fingertips—

sometimes I’m
a normal guy,
angry and hungry
with greasy-tousled
greasy locks—

or a subaverage
woman,
curvy and compassionate,
warm *****
beckoning to all
bereft—

most often, I’m a
translucent ghost,
too little there
yet not enough gone,
genderless,
formless,
obsolete