Not the product nor conclusion, but the case that merely holds it.
The theory that posits without endeavoring to ever actually prove it.
You are but the hook, the hanger, the mannequin that displays the lifestyle you'll never have the courage to actually wear outside the store that made it.
Doomed to hide in other peoples' lives.
Relishing the moments when someone else is reflected in the mirror.

The dimpled back of the banshee that haunts your hollows,
as inescapable as the back of your eyelids.
The acid in your veins, the same pH as the bile you spent your youth spewing onto unsuspecting plants. Poor things.
Pouring whatever you can down gullets, gutters, toilets -
fancying yourself freed from the fiend that had been keening deep inside your bowel.
Romanticizing the expectorant as some kind of exorcist, ridding yourself of the demon you spent the entirety of your childhood feeding.

Then I might not have to hide my tears in the space between the wall and the bed.

One day the world will look kinder upon us,
and when the wind takes the ash by the hand
and sweeps it into uncertain horizons,
they will see that I have taken the fire they set

and made her my own child. I whisper to her
that she does not hurt me, that even the sunrises
on the horizon covet her colour. I remind her
that wounds are opened in anger but burns are
borne of grit and hope, the unwanted spawn
of pain and desire scarring itself into a dance
of fire and flame.

Then I might not have to hide my love in the space between my shadow and yours.

The Wild Iris

by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

I watch as the droplet eases itself
down from the wound, into a strip of paper,
scarlet on crimson. some might call it a stain,
but this is no mistake, I will fold myself
in, like blush on cheek, I will make it look real.

is it pathetic to imitate what we can never achieve?
the night sky gloats in silent mockery. the trail of
her dress drags along my dry eyes, and she burns
a hole for every jewel I cannot reach.

is it a sin to covet a sin? my fingers run along
the grooves of my carved pupils, and I can't
remember anything aside from the warmth
of a star in another orbit.

I fold my three hundred and fifty second paper star.
Does the moon believe that these are her children too?
Or are my paper cuts for naught? One day, I know
the paper will be skin and the star will be a sun.

but until then I will bleed, and until then
I will have to suffice with a constellation of scars
that glow in the dark on my ceiling.

Remember that one time when I asked you if you remembered what happened way back when?
I forget what your answer was then,
but I remember how much it meant to me to be reminiscing with the Queen of Forgetting.

Remember when you used to care about memories?

And we went careening down streets while screaming in a mix of anxiety and exhilaration.
Each day blending with the next; driving past every chance we had to turn back,
living as if we were on a never-ending vacation.

Remember when you used to have fun? When fun was number one and everything else was boring?

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And when the Duchess of puking tried to kiss the Archduke of Douches.
Our toes a familiar sight while seeing double.
How we used to recite unrecyclable verses while climbing into the back seats of hearses.

Remember when we used to actually talk about things? No, not like this. I mean, passionately. Remember when we used to get so heated about a topic that we'd practically be screaming at each other?

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And swinging through trees that we'd climbed against better judgement;
passing under streetlights that painted haloes around our dark heads.

Remember when you used to laugh in a way that didn't sound frantic? When your grin didn't look so much like a grimace?

And going to public places in broad daylight just to read the faces of those who couldn't see beyond their own noses?

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And looking at our toes and hitting pavement but then bouncing up again to get caught in the hurricane of everyones' perceptions of what was happening

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Remember when you used to make genuine human connections with other people?

just to find ourselves in the Eye of the Storm, staring at each other, grinning in a way that isn't frightened or frightening;
Laughing in the way that isn't desperate or forced, but hearing it get warped by the howl of wind surrounding us.

Remember

How to

Wind that's closing in.

All my hopes blown away in a cloud of smoke sent up from the bathroom floor.

Heretofore forever to be well and constantly ignored.

If and then there is a justice to the semi-constant roar,
you'll find me waiting with my shades drawn down against everything that causes war.

That's not to say I'll go away on some single-sailed white ship.
My flag is not the kind of flimsy rag to get shattered by the wind,
but if and when I climb back up from these jagged steps that broke my back,
I'll carry you all with me.

That's a promise and a fact.

To pull away and fall apart,
like a cardboard box on a kite string.
In a meadow full of wild daisies,
with a truckload of duck feathers tucked inside a couple of chicken-wire cages;
leaking.

To lie awake while dreaming of escaping.
To sweat out every fear.
Crawling through the little door in the painting just to fall asleep again.