There is too much filthy, rumbling anger
for this small, peaceful quiet room.

Barbie,
I must be the Barbie.
Buddha,
I must be the Buddha, too.

So it keep it locked up,
frozen, rigid inside my tiny little Barbie body,
as if I can hold more than a room.

Like a jagged little pill
and a dream
you are.

sealed off from me
but such a big part of me now.
You're jagged and sharp and full of deep crevices and holes
that need mending

work for the careful, tender
hands of an artist
but you cut me
bit me, gnash at me and then gnaw
like jaws you are

you have taken a huge, jagged chunk of my flesh
flesh full of my essence and spirit, out of me
and flecks of spittle and anger still mar my face
like lines of war, like scars, like the Marianas Trench
like a green line down my forehead, nose, lips, chin
dividing it…and this was supposed to be love.

Fill me up
Tear me down
Empty me out
Tears are gone.
So are you.
Holes, it's all holes,
piercing polka dots
in me like a paper cup,
letting my light drip out
from inside,
leaving me empty
Empty.
Deep, deep
All that's left is poison,
deep green and grinding at my empty insides
and i'm going to float away
like a paper cup
with holes in it.
Sink, sink
Deep, deep
filling up my lungs
where dreams and fantasies used to be.

Was I stupid to dream?
Aw but they were such good dreams
and you
but you blew me away with your harsh realities
shooting holes in my cup with a shotgun
hunting my insides like a doe-eyed ray of sun.
You killed me.
Through an through, emptied me out with holes in a paper cup.

Breathless being
Sleeping giant
I poke gently first
then jab violently
wanting to see
if you are made of air and water and muscle and bone.
You deflate
into rubble and decomposed flesh
blackened by the poison
that has run your veins dark
all your life.
You crumble to ash
before my eyes
and just like that
I find I have no father.

I've been warned
but nothing prepares you
for death, dying, goneness
of the one who snuggled you
wide-eyed in his arms
as you took your first breathes
and he looked right past you
into your soul.

Hijacked you were
from the very fingertips of my fate
-not even that-
for that doesn't imply complicity, action
in your own disappearance.

Suddenly, something hatches
from your ashes
growing, shedding flesh all the time
until I am standing where your chest used to be
and it is me.

Have your nerves ever been so raw as when you sear your fingertips on a scalding hot stove top, flesh sizzling, the oils of your skin jumping up to meet your face, the lines of your fingertips so singed that they're nothing more than unrecognizable scabs? That's what losing a father is like. Or rather, that's what it's like to realize that he was never there, not for you, not at all.

The thick layer of polish comes off slow and painstaking, stripping away with it layers of nail. I cute away at my brittle nails, claw and scrape at my cuticles. I tear skin and hair away from my face along the strip of thick glue that I toss into the waist bin. Water pecks at my flesh as I scrub at my scaly rough arms, I rake my dry scalp, run a razor along my legs, and more hair and skin fall away, circling the drain as they go. I rub a watery sandpaper up and down my forehead and eyes, my nose, my cheek bones, chin, jawline, sloughing away yet another layer. The water pecks and pings and falls away from me like blood and dirt and the earth beneath me goes. I'm not in my body anymore.

I am grateful for my body.

I don't know where it comes from but I'm crying now. Who is not grateful for my body? all the attention it gets…is it me or them?

*I love my body. It is not my body's fault

Carry me through the grocery store,
the maze of aisles a hundred times, a thousand,
until it feels like home,
until I don't know anything but a haggard hollow soul wandering through.
The cow moos, the vegetables flip and sing
and I don't want anything
anything
but the ice cream outside the door.