Winter break my boyfriend and I Drive downtown.
He buys incense
lets me pick out my favorite smell.
Coconut.
We get in the car
he lights a stick and hands it to me.
The smoke flipping over in the air,
rounding like winged bats.

I breathe it in as he turns the car wheel.
Twist the scents
between my fingers,
watch as the air fills with
pipe cleaner smoke.
Wiggling,
Convulsing.

The next week my
Ex-boyfriend decides
he loves me again.
Pulls me over at a party,
beckons me to sit on the stairs.
He tells me he loves me
through drunk tongue
and I watch the wooden panels
begin to twist and curve,
tug at my tattered limbs
until I am sitting.
He pulls my arm towards him,
asks me to love him again,
asks me why I don’t.

I think of the incense
as he pulls me closer,
the delicate flips of smoke,
the moment only a smell can give you.
I breathe in and can taste the coconut,
he pulls me into him,
the coconut smell,
our two bodies,
his lips singing to kiss mine,
but I think of the coconut.
Breathe in,
twist my fingers,
leave.

©DelaneyMiller

Your face is grainy
over computer screens.
I can hear the girls
in the next room.
Their voices rattling
like lost hub caps on the highway.

You say you miss me.
Ask how the high school
is holding on without you.
If I’ve lost it yet.

Its only the second week
and I want to tell you
how I still look for you in the halls,
mope like the crevice
of half a moon lacking light.

I know its light where you are.
College parties suckling
your childhood like catfish,
till the high school on your skin is mouthed clean.
Till you forget.

How long will it be before
the catfish come for me?
Before my face is too grainy
for you to remember?
Before the moon turns black.



©DelaneyMiller

There is a bat in my closet.
I can hear it rattle its ratted wings
whenever I think about last summer,
the dark and curling feelings.

I can still see its putrid paws hanging over me
in the bathroom that summer night I came home crying.
The alcohol spilt on my dress was streaming
the words my friend  said as he threw
the open beer can at me.
“I love you and you’re too much of a ***** to love me back.”
I don’t understand why I felt so bad.
Why the bat inside beckoned to me,
hissed at me to take the razor,  
to free it from my cyclic center.

I can still feel the first cut,  
me shattering on the bathroom sink,
the bat inside of me screeching
through my watery skin.
I still do not know how to forgive myself
for being so stupid.
I do not know how to forgive the bat in me.
Instead I hide it in my closet,
Lay in bed each night hoping
its wings wont rattle through the door.

©DelaneyMiller

My family built
our house out of dad’s downstairs recording studio.
The couch where mama rubs my head.
The wooden dining room table,
where we play Cards Against Humanity.
This is love to me.

I think of these things when there are differences in our house.
When we fill each wall and crevice
with angry door slamming,
grabbed shirts,
words that split ears
like singed rocks.

Sophomore year I brought
home my first boyfriend.
I told mama we were in love.
We sat at the table,
played board games with my family.
He was quick to help my brother
with the rules,
quick to help mama clean up the dishes.
He memorized the way our paint chipped,
the way we built our home.
I watched as he brushed his hands
over our dining room table.
Thought he fixed the *****
crevices in our walls.

7 months later we are driving home from a date.
I let him squeeze my thigh.
Smiled even though it hurt.
I agreed to let him pull over.
Push me against the car window.
I smiled as he fish hooked my hands
to the roof of the car.

I didn’t  tell him
that my neck was craning.
That I wanted to go home.
I didn’t resist as he pushed.
Kept smiling as his kisses got rougher.

All this time I had been pretending
that what he was doing was okay,
that his love was my family’s piano,
the black bricked fireplace,
not the door slamming in my bedroom
not the dining room table,
not the way he sat at it
and never wanted to leave.  
I never thought it would be fair to want him to leave.

Driving home that night I was lucky.
I know I wasn’t *****
but when he squeezed my thigh I didn’t say no.
Didn’t scream like I wanted to,
didn’t kick like I should have.
Didn’t know how to leave someone
who was already built into my home.

I should have known.
No matter how much he fit into
the walls of our home,
he would never play
the piano like my dad,
never rub my head like my mom.
He would never be family.
Never know how to watch paint chip,
and let it become part of a home.
He would only surround me with walls
and watch as they sunk into the floor like love.
Where do you go when you are no longer safe inside your own walls?

©DelaneyMiller

On the train track walls
across from my house
there are symmetrical black letters.
Evolve Today.
I don’t know what to feel
when I see them.
Don’t know if I should admire
the way they suckle to the wall
like papered monarchs.
Watch as my hands flutter
at each letter.
I wish I could be like him.

I picture him cutting each letter
with an exacto knife.
Drawing every line and crevice,
Evolve Today.
Smiling at his new art like
it means something different.
Each time I see the letters
I stare at the wall,
picture his hooded head,
his butterfly hands
they are steady as he paints.

My hands are always shaking.
On Friday he parks the car in an alley.
Hoods his head,
grabs a can of spray paint.
Evolve Today.
I look down and notice
how my leg is convulsing,
watch as he dances across pavement
coats a dumpster in his art.
My head is turning,
twitching up and down
like spray paint.
I cannot help but think of the consequences.

He gets in the car
tells me it feels good.
I look at the winged paint
on his hands.
Evolve Today.
All I see is evidence.
I sit there wishing I could
hold a can of paint and keep steady.
I sit there wishing that my legs
would stop twitching,
my arms would stop shaking,
my mind would stop cocooning,
that for once I could butterfly like him.

On Monday I go back to school.
Sit in class and think
of his hooded head,
his spread arms,
his steady letters.
I grab a pen out of my bag,
Evolve Today.
Half of a butterfly
papered to the desk.


©DelaneyMiller

Moment,
A suicide letter I write in 8th grade.
I heat metal chains
with my straightener.
Press.
Watch as sink holes
begin to expand in my hand.

Maybe,
A list of considerations.
Starting to see the crimson crust,
the weeping sores,
furrowed skin,
the combust of myself as beautiful.

Mimic,
I think I am copying my mother.
She sinks into her sheets,
a mess soaking into a towel.
Us only speaking when she finds
something to yell about.

Maniac,
The day I forgot to wear long sleeves.
My mother takes my straightener,
metal chains, scissors, “You’re crazy”
Pens curler, pencils, I’m Crazy.

Maternal,
I try to find a mother in a therapist.
Scar cream fills the sink holes.
The left over sores only remind
me of the depressed image of ill bed sheets.

Moral,
Learning that misshaping myself
would never fix the sick in her voice.
Watching as my hand
Extinguished the charcoaled
Sores with new skin.

Memory,
Looking at my left hand
and the scars that have
become only small ashes
of a fire.
Only a moment.

©DelaneyMiller

Your room is always messy.
Cheerios crowding into the carpet
careful not to be crushed by your drunken feet.
I ask you why you never clean it.
You say this is what college is.

You haven't talked to me in three days.
I lay awake at night picturing you
in your dirtied room,
the clattering windows shades,
the TV you never turn off.

In my head I ask you why
you never clean it.
Maybe if you just moved a pair
of pants you'd find me shadowing underneath.
Maybe you'd know how to talk to me again.

I don't look for an answer.
Instead I watch my windows sway,
wait for you to call,
wait to forgive you.

©DelaneyMiller