I found my grandmother the night she died
The room filled with mourning tears
My mother slapped me
because I hadn't cried in two days
At 18 how do you emotionally process a body that once held a life?

Disconnected from my thoughts
I felt neither pain nor love nor loss
How could I say that, without feeling defective
but I couldn't get past that shell with empty eyes
that stared at me until I noticed they weren't smiling

When the body turned to flesh
she was gone and I was lost
in those empty eyes that seemed to
hold a universe of nothing
and if I stared too long I'd disappear in that void
where her light used to shine

**

Too soon, I held my mother's hand as she passed
and watched the life leech out of her skin
The eyes were the last part of her to fade
I stared at her
Willing with all that I am that they would
spark and reignite the fire of who she was
But her skin ran cold the second the light ceased
So cold, yet so very soft.

Two days, and a blended family to hold up
Even with makeup, dressed to the nines
It didn't feel less... wrong
She was beautiful, but she wasn't my mother

I couldn't escape the knowledge
of invisible sutures
As I held her face and fixed her hair
I cursed those television shows I once watched with her
The ones that taught us how things worked
The ones that burned the knowledge of
the sutures into my memory
a memory I couldn't escape

Four days and two shoulders heavy with tears
Too busy with paperwork and wishes
to bleed tears of my own
Thankful for things to do
So I wouldn't get lost in her empty eyes
that stared at me whenever I closed my own

I sit here, grown, wondering how to
emotionally process a body that once held a life?
Praying that she will slap me for not being able to cry
Just so I could feel her

i.

melted ice cream afternoons
bogged down

rising from asphalt
in magical mist
that transforms
the day into
a test of endurance

even dusk offers
no solace
in frozen watermelon bliss


ii.

smoke permeates fabric
hair and every surface
with peace and grit
wafting over
the crispy
edges of predawn

begging sleep
to the most stubborn
insomniac

rotisserie style dreams
till morning


iii.

there's less death today
waiting in line
in candy store nightmares
begging silence
from the jubilant

but the sky turned up
a dream state

in that beguiling beauty
is brilliance


iv.

in shadows
the earth falls silent

rustling through
tall tales
the moon births

images in hidden corners

evening strolls
turn adventures

and every day
burns quick
to be reborn slowly


v.

the weight of hell
in short tempered bites
**** will with a proficiency
unseen outside
a viper's silent hunt

ready for war
with fists losing
responsibility

breaking triple digit
pressure


vi.

Incessant banging through walls built faster than I am strong enough to demolish, cradling lace so it won't rip on my forked tongue. There is only so much care left to handle perception just trying to breathe through a smile.

By Arcassin Burnham


Respect others the way you want to be,
If everyone were like you, there would be
an assessment full of happiness through
the planet bringing in a new and a better
array of paths to all,
African American mothers that don't
understand their son always regret it later on,
The life expectancy of a black man to any
other could be limited by any given time,

But it could have been worse,
I'm putting don't my guard now.
I'm at peace with me , but what about you?
I'm in touch the spirit in the sky now.
They don't lie when they say life is a game,
Literally.
I will always rise above all , and love myself
spiritually...

buy a big glass house and live,
on the beach,
learn in here than what your,
body could teach.
I could be the only living person in this
ghost town to ever give a **** about
what goes on with the wickedness,
I could be someone that is homeless
living on the **** street and end up at
the wrong place along with weakness,

But it could have been worse,
I'm putting don't my guard now.
I'm at peace with me , but what about you?
I'm in touch the spirit in the sky now.
They don't lie when they say life is a game,
Literally.
I will always rise above all , and love myself
spiritually..

I saw you on the plane.
The small crook of your neck turned
outward and resting along the
shoulder-line of another man.
How many lives will it take to shake
your phantoms from my spine?

We made eye contact disembarking and,
awash with turbulent shadows of
an old unyielding guilt, I said nothing.
There is a regret that exists,
deeper and more exacting within the shells
of lives we shake off and carry behind us—
tin cans attached to the wedding car
we will never drive.

I
am
******

and not in a clawing flesh, body convulsing, banging headboard kind of way

that kind of ****** I can rock the **** out of.

No
I am more the
twisted mess of forced misconception
enlightened by time innocence forgot
forced into a life guided by trust in the lies truth told

Yeah,
it's the end of life as I know it
that's the kind of ****** I am

I knew joy
it was based on trust in what was true

I knew love
it was built on that same foundation

So yes,
I am ******
this mess of **** crumbling to pebbles while blinding me in the dust of my own ignorance
is anything but blissful

and all I hear are the cries of beautiful dying
not that dying is beautiful, though it can be
but of the death of beautiful things
of things I found implicitly lovely
the painful dying of all I believed was good

I am so ****** sideways

protected by others
I can no longer say for certain who I am
or who I believe myself to be

****** hard and unrecognizable
***** into truth by the kindness of others

No more questions because I am ****** that way too
no one wants to hear their old news and ***** laundry

I knew love once
now all I love, I question
reliving my choices in reasons why
trying to piece together my life had I always known
trying to define how I love by my own definitions
and not by what I knew love to be
because that love never existed
only in my ******, shattered memory

So, hey
guess what
I used to love you
now it's tainted with yesterday's **** streaks

I'm still me
But boy
am I ******

trapped beneath a fitted rubber sheet
a lump in the mattress
suffocating on
rancid latex sweat
and yesterday's dried fluids

who were they
the nameless in the dark
this one smelled of popcorn
that on howled in delight

a collage of senseless noise
scented by cats and Ajax
leftovers always go bad

Chuck-will's-widow
in the tree by the window
it must be after midnight

though noon looks the same
in this cage that gives just enough
to torture with possibilities
of breaking free

freedom is overrated
roses stain glass
with the bloodletting
of thorny mishaps

blurred by smeared wounds
ain't life grand
when love ceases to be a goal

how can one find what is
utterly indefinable
if it cannot be decisively named
it cannot be concretely attained

then again, love's fluidity
is its charm
no hard edges
ebbing and flowing
elusive and longing

**** me latex blind
unseen and used
by those who never did mind
a lumpy mattress

Frick.


Don't feel bad for yourself.
You have it so good.
You have a house
to live in
You have clothes to wear
You have
a family
who loves you.

You have a boyfriend
who wants to spend the rest of his life with you.
Everything is going to be okay.


Bad things ****.
Good things are hard.
Life takes a long time to get right.

elephants stomping on my head
laugh as they draw blood
fragmented ideals scatter in the wind
as trampled dreams mix with dust

cemented in 'supposed to'
hiding behind other people's 'shoulds'
jackhammer disappointment
crushes bones with broken boundaries

play me a song
to make it look pretty
and I'll pretend to dance
with you in foggy yesterday's

karaoke soundtracks
to a stranger's tears
that leave the heart blind
tripping acid just to see in forgotten colors

breathing bacteria
from the soles of shoes
wiped on my forehead
as they said, 'hello'

a mosaic of skull puzzles
grouted in the remnants of the ****
left behind as everyone
just walks away

shadows smell clean in dark corners
where colors are left to die
in clouds of expectation
leaving truth buried in the ruble

...of who they thought I was

Goodnight my darling,
sleep until the morning comes
and wakes you with its gentle finger
of sunlight, shining on your pillow.
Sleep until the clouds break the dawn
and steal away the night
from under the moon.
Sleep until the day is bright
and the time is right
and your eyes open wide.
Sleep tight. <3

Florida,
when it was known to me,
was a long land of strip malls and palm trees.
A long land of asphalt roadways and people
waiting on something
they pretended was not death.
The cast-aways of a culture that could not
strap their useless to a tree and leave them.

You could hear them in the grocery stores,
the thin lines of sweat beaded together
to crouch in the wrinkles of their flesh.
You could watch them in traffic,
sifting to the side like *******,
collecting itself and slowing down to naught.

It was not a happy place.
the sun reflecting in painted posters
and painted smiles, convincing those
who were not there.
Cold drove them down en masse,
large four-lane-highway flocks of them,
with winter adverts that lingered on
snowed-in, New England cable televisions,
telling of a thing that did not exist.

Florida,
when it was known to me,
was a land of dark, high-waisted palms
lining roads thick with *******,
asphalt glowing in its heat-induced mirage.
everything seeming off, distant,
everything somewhere else.

You could walk along the pavement,
feeling your feet echo upward from your
shoe-soles, watching the white-haired movement
of traffic, and almost remember
everything the world had ever thrown away.

A cacophony of wasted space in a mind too full to see
boring holes to breathe or vent
or pray that there is no light to be let in

Was never done dying before yesterday moved
tomorrow is last year a lifetime ago
today, erased by was and will

Tears can't dry in incessant floods
bleeding acid that feeds unhealing wounds
in a mix of steroids and parasites

Faced with all that perception ever was
altered reality in crushed emotion
scraping the dregs of feeling to find a place to sleep

Jagged shards of memories offer the most comfort
as they slice what attempted to heal
killing me slowly anew with each passing moment

Moments torn in a million pieces of equal pain
encased in cemented ideals and rosy falsehoods
yesterday is the only reality left

Outside a clenched fist holding onto nothing
blood crusts in black paint
open or closed, there's nothing left to see

Longing to bleed out through the ****** of dreams
left to die in a place that packs holes with dirt
enough to exist in an invisible life

Killing the long ago before it finishes what it started
seems its own nightmare of weakness
will it alive or will it dead, just will something and make it so

A lifetime of dying in a half-life of truth
gray eats black as anguish feeds on beauty
nothing remains in untouched memories

An abandoned amusement park,
the ruins of a funhouse,
mirrors cloudy and thick with soot.
Stare at the various reflections:
warped and distorted
to gross effect, like entryways into
equal and opposite pasts.

Do you remember the way
the smiles used to rise up
from the glass and echo
against the translucent light?
Some distant tinny laughter
brings you into daylight:
a chirping bird, a memory,
a rusted bell shaking
against the fog.

I think I'd like to write something once
that isn't bent and weighed down
with sand.
See where it sits and pours,
over and upward and outward
away from me.
A career of sand.
The grains sit and fill-in
spaces between the keys,
eating up the page
and the words, and the years,
and the tips of callous fingers:
all of it sand.


Textures sift between hands,
a warm roughness beneath
un-blanketed backs.
Turn it over in the picture frame.
A memory that won’t part from
the foreground,
won’t erase itself from the
desert it mires in.

The shower-head of time
refusing to scour the hands,
backs, fingertips, a keyboard
against an empty page.
All of it sand–
lone and level,
far as the eye can see.