left with a pencil sans eraser, a paper
denoting, “this is what to do if you feel self
harmful or aggressive.” down from there
a list of things to do in the sanctimonious occasion.

from the hall you can only see rooms
room after room after room
inside, i hear it, the reminder
of where i am.

a girl in a blue sweatshirt smiles
waves. makes polite gestures and suggests
maybe things aren’t awful for everyone
but they are for me.

i recognize her face from somewhere
and i realize there are so many
****** souls here that i used to
only see in dreams.

while your hands traced the curves of my body and touched the breath on my lips
i knew that i would be doomed with another thing to write about
that you would create bruises wherever your skin ignited mine
like the nape of my neck, or the back of my hand.
or my eyelids. yeah a very funny place to be kissed at.
or the spaces in between my legs
they will rot and mourn the passing of another lover another abuser
i put your name right next to the first man that touched this body they call a temple
and i call a warzone
i was two years old then, and i was twenty two when you claimed what you thought
was rightfully yours to take
somenights i wonder that when your brain takes you back to that room
what do you remeber?
i remeber yellow sunny lights
my hearts catapulating, my eyes blurry
my legs open like a cave
my body getting prepared to please another
to take refuge of you only to never see you again
i hope you remeber the last time you touched my body and
called it comfortable was when
i couldnt feel anything but death on my tongue
now i lay here
four prescriptions , ten suicide attempts later
trying to remember
which list to put you in?
where you a lover? or where you a abuser?
or where we so complicated in the mix that
i made a burning house out of my body
and burnt you down too.
i still sit  at 3am waiting with that
blade in my hand waiting to make that last
final call

knees faltering and feet failing
my steps betray me
strides carry me no further away
stationary, subjugated, gasp for air
keep running to nowhere

my mother became a psychiatrist after
the rain came and went and
smiled upon the Earth in
immense broken silence. and I asked

why does the sky burn blue
and she told me
because it is a river and will burn through
the banks and move
desperately into the ocean
a holiness we cannot make sense of
that it is both water and fire. and it was
always both smoke and steam
where you can feel the chimerical pain
of thousands of steam engines from
the middle of the industrial revolution​. father
became a natologist after the world
birthed me prematurely and i came out
covered in blood and shame.

he told me the last birth will be
the same as the first / a bursting of the river
that burns steams and runs
moving through the mud of the river banks / it
will come from the flesh and die in the flesh
it will become the last love
of the earth and the first love of the stars
birthing the river does burst into
eternity.

the young girl came back home last night
with a vacant look in auburn eyes and
a sense of what it means to be dead.

she shows us the language of unwanted touch.
first, the way it takes words and slurs them
changes words like ****** to daddy
because you are afraid of where he will
touch you next and you learn
you need to speak his language if you
want to survive.

second, the way it takes aching and twists it
changes words like love and turns it to lust
but you are just trying to survive
so you stroke his ego before you can strike
his ego.

third: the way you have died one hundred deaths
and could not articulate them in a language
outside of the ******’s.

the rapists tongue is yours now
you know how to speak it but refuse
all opportunity to because you are so afraid
i will become like him.

the desk bolted into the ground
the chair equally bolted
your head smashed into it
hanging there, bleeding
a rotting orange in that room you went to every morning.
your skin against skin against skin
the resting body
your father after the sixth time you tried to off yourself and woke up in the same place you’ve always been
the white crinkled scars from your nervous tick
the same tick your father had that made him scratch that brown spot atop his bald head.
you going silent after the ****
him going off to tell his boys after
the moment frozen in time
my headaches
the will to live matched with the want to die.

you did rain honey
and gold and silver
and later acid.
you were thunderclouds
with lightning disaster
but it doesn't really matter.

we've been in a drought
for six years.
long enough where father
has up and left the farm
stopped checking the almanac for when
it'll rain honey.
it never rains.

you did rain honey
but now you scarcely exist
i question: god, why have you left us?

i am leaving my notes
my offerings to you
at the front of the village gates
building shrines for you.

you scarcely exist.
are you god or my lover?