i think i was born with my head in my hands or my stomach in knots or my shoes untied. i got sober before i turned 16 ; i sat with some largeness ; vacant cities living in between my ribs encasing fragments of things i can't remember for one reason or another. i mistake hunger for holiness i recite catholic hymns while i brush my teeth . how do i sleep in a warm bed knowing of the red wine stains on my sheets . how do i ignore the twists in my intestines how do i die without makeup on.. it feels like i never know anything these days.

only sometimes i find myself still punishing the same ill feeling, creeping up my back and around my spine. this is the kind of hindsight that sits on my shoulder and watches me breathe. how else do i get rid of my headache? i have been something of a promised wish, a shallow pool of sin in the very center of my body. and it feels like i'm buried alive, like there's thick mud clogging my throat, like i'm suffocating from some other sickness. what cannot fool me is what breaks me the most... what strikes me the hardest comes from far, far away.

i had a dream where i walked outside and it was the right kind of cold.
it was the kind of cold where you can take off your jacket and feel the air biting onto your flesh like sweatbeads in the summertime.
i looked down and i was 13 again when things were bad but not yet worse
and i realized the more i dissect my happiness the more devastated i will become.
and eventually i'll be a highschooler doing lines in bathroom stalls and drinking my dad's tequila
and nothing will feel the way it's supposed to.
my burnt fingertips will touch bodies and bottles and i will sit smelling of smoke,
and i'll only see two stars in the sky.
it won't be raining but i will feel water running down my back, soaking my clothing and the almost black dirt.
i woke up from my dream on the first day of the year and i sat in a hospital gown with the faint taste of blue raspberry on my teeth
and i wished i would've died a little sooner,
because tonight it's even colder and the stars are shrinking and i didn't give my body a chance to grow up before i did.
it's terrible that you don't regret it until it's eaten you whole.

tonight feels infinitesimal so i curl at your feet like roadkill, dead but still full of hunger. i tell you in tears that i can't stop wishing myself away. what do you do to this feeling? how do you punish your pessimism without getting sick on the carpet? everything always takes me back to your eyes. and i cant stop thinking about the decay of all of it, the things i can't even remember. i am still hungry. there's a bearskin rug by the door. you eat fruit to the rind and you smoke to the filter and i love you more when you leave the cabinets unlocked. thank you, for all the horror.

i need to have the earth on a skewer because i am nothing special. i am a harmless child, learning to twist up my tongue and articulate, so i need to grip these men in the palm of my hand. i need to scream until my bones twitch. this summer the edges of my world are going to meet and all the stars will fall flat. and it'll be all my fault. and i will smile so hard my lips will split. this summer i am turning backwards and nothing will ever be the same. take me back into your skin. cover me with a sheet and keep stabbing.

god makes no mistakes, god circles your drain, god looks just like you.
god put his face in my hands, i dont want remember the questions i was asked.
i remember the heat of a church in august,
repeating scriptures as my knees ache against the **** carpet.
i learned that god doesnt pressure the sick ones, he only breaks beneath it. i am salvaging the consolation of knowing these things.
i cherish him with my fingernails,
and i shake like an exhausted child.
i am trying my best to shake this swirling from my mind.
hallowed be my breath my eyes my insides,
because i cant seem to stop believing in you so i am proving myself the only way i can.
flailing, wrecking, losing.