some greedy little bitter man has put together a picture-perfect person and out of pure laziness and malignant attempts at control he pays off a psychopath to make it happen but we’re just a little body, flesh and bones come between them and their paychecks so why not make it easier? they made a factory out of our garden and nothing grows in factories it’s manufactured, easy as one two three four five six, we’re all sitting on an assembly line waiting for some alcoholic man to shout at some pimply-faced twenty-something “FASTER! FASTER!” so it begins! press of a button, we’re created, step one: your parents were given the baby books, kids! infants, they’re all the same anyways. they’re not individuals yet, they haven’t been encoded so relax, parents. want them turn out like you? sure, do what your parents did, worked out well, eh? been occupying this factory your whole life, then? well anyways, step two: they spend less time with you because you’ve been in this world for three years so it’s time you get out on your own…. step three: they gotta YELL and scream and children aren’t supposed to touch things or say things or scrape their knees because that’s more work for the adults, and they work all day, just like they were programmed for, good little machines 'cause they forgot what it’s like to be a baby or an animal or a plant or a God but also the resentment, a child wants to live but how ridiculous? there’s no life in industry… all about the money baby step four: you buy your education because it builds your character because money says power but when did meaningless power equal respect? I don't know but they force you into reading the same old instruction pamphlets left in the break room at the plant for the past century or so and five: your turn to work for fourty years in this polluted place because it’s hard to break free from twenty-three years of moulding into a cookie cutter you never did fit, that’s why it hurts so much when they try to push you through, your muffin-top is sliced right off and you’re contorted to fit the view of perfect sugary sweetness but just to make sure you're ready they coat you with vanilla icing to cover up your imperfections, perfect, now step six, and this one is the doozy, and because you’re **** broke: go back to mom and dad’s and grab those baby books and again and again and again the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats….

I walked down a silver path
silver was the moon, he told me
‘silver is money, I’ve got that’
‘silver is your eyes,’ I told him

I smelled a daffodil
I thought,
but the bright yellow mess was just a ****
nicely dressed

there were shrubs, planted firmly
I thought
until the harsh spring rain
uprooted them in a quick fit

I walked through the night,
dancing
watching the stars, I thought
they danced with me

he watched me,
watching the sky
‘kiss the stars for me,’ he told me
and I did

colours, lights, feeling
and sight
indistinguishable
in the silver moonlight

I was led, then
to an inevitable dawn
and cast into
the golden sun

as an infant born of a silver womb
I thank him for keeping me
warm at night
and I thank him for letting me go

I hop into a bed most nights,


                         most nights I take my ******* off and if I’m lucky then there’s something soft like a blanket knit by my grandmother’s hand or sometimes the boorish **** of a man, it’s all the same;

something soft to soothe my soul at night.

sometimes I paint my lips the scarlet of a harlot so that my smirk will weaken someone at the knees,
                         I only hope; and to get into my bed at night they need only say please, brush my dissipated face
with their disappointed fingers
and then whisper you could be so beautiful… and the loneliness consumes me,
then it begins to confuse me
and I could hide in here for days simply staring at a picture,
or I could drink it all away with a girl and then I’d kiss her

    but it’s all the same escape; I’m just trying to soothe my soul with something soft tonight.

I knew when I picked that tulip from the neighbour’s yard
that I wasn’t just killing a flower but something inside of me.
I didn’t know what it was, then.


(innocence.

that’s what it was.)

I didn’t know why I told them that I found the flower that way,
broken and left to rot and “all I did was save the poor thing!”
it seemed natural to weave this story rather than confess.

I felt bad about taking that flower. for stealing someone’s
pretty pink petals
that they’d undoubtedly cared for,
pruning and watering,
that’s why they looked so good.
that’s why I picked the best of the bunch.

they knew I did it.
I insisted otherwise, and received a slap on the wrist
no more severe than when I’d pushed my little sister
or spilled glitter on the new carpet.
but this wrist-slap stuck with me.


I’d discovered more than the sweet smell
of pollen or nectar or chlorophyll seeping
out the snapped portion of the stem.
when I told this lie I’d felt a joy in me that as a four-year-old
I couldn’t explain
but it made me warm.

I inhaled the shame and drowned in guilt and I thought
of how I could do this again and not get caught.

I was addicted.


and I knew it, then.

sometimes I can feel the earth's heart beating with mine - her heat often boiling my core. a burdensome blessing to bleed when others fall.