There’s a treasure hidden deep within my bones,
and it seems like it’s the collective world’s job
to find it. To sink their hands so deep within
that my ribs crack apart and I am angel-spread.

And then they can take whatever they want
and call it ‘treasure’. And I can be left behind
and call it heartbreak, because then I’ll have something
to write poems about. Something to cry about
when I’m not really sad, I just want to be.

But if I am the forest, then I have many places to hide:
the gaps between my fingers, the way my stomach
folds over on itself. The mortifying ordeal
of knowing who I am can perhaps be my greatest ally.

So come, bring your maps and your backpacks
and all those things that TV taught you adventurers need;
come inside, I’ll put the stove on, let’s have some tea,
and you can warm your greedy hands
before they worm inside me.

Five.
There’s a lump on my breast that I haven’t told the doctor about.
I told my mum, and she said it was probably fine, so it’s probably
fine, even if my friends tell me to stop chancing it and see a specialist.
Sometimes I try to pop it like a blister or a spot, but it just stings
and then Google tells me that cancer is more of a dull ache, so it’s fine.

Four.
I threw up violently in the bathroom and then my heart felt heavy.
Ignoring the obvious irony of ‘heavy’, I could describe it as:
tight, aching, dull, wheezing, like a fist clenched right around it.
Convincing myself that I was having an elongated, stretched-out
heart attack, I took myself to the hospital.
They gave me acid reflux pills.

Three.
When I was seventeen, I was as seventeen as a seventeen year old can get.
That is to say, my problems were both numerous and the end of the world.
So it surprised exactly nobody, least of all the police officers that were called,
when I took a scalpel and tried to perform surgery on myself. Yeah —
that happened. But at least I got to ride in a police car
on the way to tell the crisis team that everything was really okay, I promise.

Two.
Osteoporosis runs in my family. Like the lamest curse that can possibly
be passed down through female lineage, it’s a given truth that one day,
my bones will become brittle and break. To this day, I haven’t lost my bone-
breaking virginity, and I personally think it ***** to be twenty-one
and have never had the opportunity to get a cast signed. I drink a lot of milk.

One.
To this day, I have a fear of home invasion. I suppose I’m more attuned
to the house-settling noises of being alone. If I’ve made a habit of ignoring
all my own bone creaks, they’ll start popping up in other places.
Like knocking on a door that’s already open. Like the way the bed creaks
when I turn over. Like checking the locks when something is already inside.

I swallowed my lunch down the wrong way
and now there’s something in my lungs,
eggs, I think, cracked into little pieces
with the shells all picked out.
I really should have known when I couldn’t breathe
that I was doing this backwards,
but I swallowed anyway, and now when I hyperventilate
it’s like my body is trying to make an omelette.

It sounds so funny. It sounds like everybody
but me is laughing. I mean, it’s a ridiculous idea,
having eggs in your lungs,
but the more I think it’s true, the more I feel them.

I suppose this is divine punishment
for the impossible crime of eating lunch,
for taking those eggs and cracking them straight
into my mouth. There are probably some unborn
chicks thinking, in as much as chicks can think
like we do, that this is divine punishment.
Who gets the last laugh? The abortion does.

And now I’m on the table — medical, not,
you know, the dinner one,
and the doctors are saying that they’re going to cut
something out of me to keep me alive.
If it weren’t for the fact that my mouth
has been sewed up to prevent my own idiocy,
I’d tell them that that’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.

I waterfall my fingers down my throat
and wriggle them like they’re alive,
like I’m nineteen years old again,
trying to prove that I’m the cool girl
with no gag reflex.

The shower runs on boiling hot
and if I stand, I might fall,
so I’m taking the hair-infested plughole
as my date to the dance,
once I’m done with the black hole left in its absence.

My fingers are uncomfortably water-warm
and if I close my eyes, it feels so good,
like the first time I realised there was a clenched fist
inside my stomach that I could begin
to uncurl.

When I think about it, it’s like *******.
It’s something I wouldn’t talk about in Church
and it’s something I should only do behind closed doors.
A lot of things are like *******, in that way,
like being gay, and cutting my own hair, and whatever this is.

It’s a distraction.
It’s something to do when the list of things to be done
is the same every day, when the doors are perpetually
shut and the clenched fist will always be clenched
once rigor mortis has set in.

Sometimes I feel like there’s a worm inside my mind,
I hear it, when it’s nighttime, it has a voice
and that voice tells me to turn my body four times
so that everyone I love doesn’t leave me.

More than that, though, I feel it
right at the back of my skull. It nestles
deep inside and chokes the blood flow away
from rationality, and I clench my fist two times two.

And then it uncurls. I think it is wounded
but it is really just gorging on the compulsion
I have fed it. Again. But the reprieve is glorious
for a moment, until its maw opens back up for more.

Its body is a spiral, contorting thoughts
until I am at its mercy; although it is part of me,
I feel as though I am part of it.
It’s impossible to run away from an attached body.

One day, everyone you love will die and it will be your fault,
ballet turn, pivot, dance en pointe my darling, again,
walk, walk, walk, walk, there we go, now people are alive.
Now you’re a hero, for a second, for two.

Here we are in the thick of it.

Oh, you didn’t like that, did you?

Almost like clockwork,
the bone breaks. This time,
an arm, a warning
against the things that hands
can do. Cut it off not at the disease,
but at the root.

We hope, this time,
that we were quick enough
in the amputation.
That the disease has spread
no further than the floor
upon which the phantom limb jerks.

Last time, it was slow,
an infestation below the muscle
until the patient was screaming
for morphine. We had to cut
the lower leg first, but the thigh
was already prisoner.

The neuroscience department
has been working overtime
on all the brains we lobotomised
before removal. We’re thinking
that’s where it ruminates,
dormant, like a volcano.

The infection manifests
differently in everyone.
In some, it cries for attention,
and we cut the throat.
In others, it’s violence,
and it ends up killing itself.

There’s not much we know
and even less we can name.
When they brought my body
in, they called it loneliness,
and cut out my heart.
The wolves ate well that night.

Rust on the duvet, thick
and red and oxygenated
with disuse. Somewhere,
there’s a baby crying
for milk, yelling from all
the apartment walls;
domestic arguments,
pain painted over with a fresh
coat, cotton sheets closeted
with fire, something red (again).
Hands, gripping, arching
in isolated agony, the woman
in the bed is only
a woman in a bed. Tomorrow
the pain may subside
with ibuprofen and heat,
but tonight it boils over
like a cauldron, like a curse
between the legs. Rust
chips away at the milk
softness. A knife could slice
right through and nothing
would change. There’s no point
changing the sheets again.

The body peels itself
away from the floorboards,
sweat, sticky and slick,
pops like a gunshot
as the skin pulls loose.

Shoulder blades pulsate
as movement returns
once more. “It’s been
a hell of a night,”
the heavy arms creak.

Even in the dark of the room,
the body can sense morning;
the dew on the legs, the cool
floorboards are warming
with the dawn.

There’s something here
about a beginning.
The body
pulls at the skin
and it is still attached —

Meaning, of course,
that the body is a body
once more. Meaning,
of course, that the beginning
has already begun.

i am numb.
this is the one place
i cannot bear to take you,
even though i am prepared
to go to hell with you,
i will not bring you here.

it is a bathroom.
any bathroom, really,
as long as there’s something
to lean over,
something to flush,
something to destroy
the moment the room is occupied.

it’s alright, though,
because there’s a whole world
out there for us,
with gorgeous architecture
and natural allure,
so let’s go there, instead.

yes, i’ll be out soon.
if you have the tickets,
we can go anywhere.
just give me twenty minutes
to make everything okay again,
and i’ll take you
to see the taj mahal,
the colosseum,
the broken ruins of rome.

but i can never take you here.
i’m sorry;
whatever metaphorical journey
you may have thought you were on
ends here.
it’s just not something i can bring you into.

this is mine.
and i’m calling this the end.

i don’t think i love you any more,
whoever you are;
i guess i talked myself out of it
like i talk myself out of impulse purchases
or loving myself fiercely.
the point is, i don’t want to go anywhere
with you, only home, alone,
even if this isn’t finished yet.

i think there’s some finality
that neither of us will reach here,
but what you’re reading is the beginning
of the end.
i’ve fallen out of love with you,
yes, i don’t think it any more,
i know it.
this is so nearly over,
the page is breathing a sigh of relief.

so i’m going home.
i’m going somewhere safe,
and the door will be locked behind me.
the bottles of wine
in the bag against my door
will windchime-beckon my arrival,
loving me far more honestly
than anything you’ve given to me
or i’ve taken from you in here.

i’m bursting the bubble that i created,
and you’re going to hate it,
but i don’t love you any more,
so i don’t think i need to destroy
what i need just to see you smile, now.
here’s me, picking up the knife,
and you’re not begging me to do anything,
you’re just staring
at whatever i’m saying
like these words are somehow real
and not present in the moment.

it’s been fun. just fun,
but i’m going home now.
whichever sense of place
i’ve tried to lay claim to
will forever be lost on a plane ticket
or a scrapbook that i won’t make,
because i’m going home, now.

i’m nearly there.

in my daydreams, there are two beautiful things;
you, and the possibility of not being alone.
everything else is pretty, but cannot compare
to these two non-facts.

even when the sky chooses colours
that have never been combined before,
and clouds wisp across the sky like a marching band,
i only want to look at you, and be together.

even when the sun peaks over the horizon,
crowning another day in such bright gold
that i have to squint, i can stare wide-eyed
at you, and i am no longer lonely.

even as the breeze seeps into the grass,
blowing kisses to lovers and losers alike,
gentle and soft and unknowing of hurricanes,
i have you, and i am not isolated.

even as midday blazes with all the force
of commanding attention, and birds scream-sing
songs that i’ve never heard before, i will listen
but not look, because i am with you.

even when eternity stretches out across the daydream,
calling up wonders of possibility,
saying that anything can be real if i can imagine it,
i only imagine you, and a world that loves me back.

even when the day fades into brilliant night,
and stars ***** themselves into a pinboard-reality,
i cannot bring myself to count constellations,
because you are there, and brighter than them all.

it sounds romantic. it sounds like i am in love,
but really, i’m just terrified that if i look away for a moment,
you’ll be gone, and i’ll have to find a mirror to shatter
so that i cannot confront what i am missing.

even when the dream fades,
and the world sets in, all train tracks and buildings
that i can jump off, i don’t,
because i have my mind, and i haven’t lost it yet.

don’t worry, i realised it for both of us;
how immaterial we are in terms of this
high rise plumed against the sky.

how there may be a man -
any man -
playing guitar below, but he
is playing for nobody, not even us.
we’re just singing along.

and the clouds whisper down
that it might rain later,
but i’ll still take your hand
on the railing,
illuminated with neon,
half-life filtered
through ***** glasses and ecstasy,
and we’ll talk about
getting back to the present.

because now, it’s nighttime,
and now, you look
like me in this light
and now, the immaterial
is taking off into
what we could have been,
had we only stayed in this spot
thirty years ago.

but it doesn’t matter
who we are.
we are here.
scratch it into the railing
with the key
i gave you
yesterday.

these indistinguishable streets,
walkways, crowning themselves
into a sense of uniqueness;
not quite defined
but solitary, and ripe
in their loneliness.

crooked bricks,
vying for sunlight;
the endless yearning
to be free. streets
slanted, disjointed,
quite confined in song
and history.

something shared
between the potholes,
passed forth
and forth again,
like garden twine
binding something
against something else.

it’s vague;
by nature, perception
is subjective
and you may take from this
what you desire.

if you listen,
you can hear the ticking
of everything
that has passed this by,
alleyways branching
into each other, snaking
circles around the easy way out.

so let’s work out
a sense of place.
something that you
can lay claim to, as understanding
l’histoire de la vie
from all of this.

see it yet?

i’m going to have to dress you up for this one, i hope you don’t mind,
it’s just that we’re flitting between identities and trying to change the past.

by change, i mean we’re keeping everything the same,
but switching out her for me,
in the white-washed hallways with that imagery you fear;
a pregnant factory belt birthing electric dreams.

it’s all about what they do to women
and our brains and our autonomy,
it’s selfish, really,
to make this about me sitting alone in my room
but we’re still choking out the space we claim.

if there’s a film camera, there’s a film,
and if there’s an eye, there’s an i.
get those cinematic shots of long hallways where nobody knows what’s next,
and play the nurse, play the exorcist, thrice.

you’ll never know how many years you have after leaving western state,
but i’m hoping for less;
life afterwards is the transitional period between salt and freshwater,
and i need to distance myself.

*oh, how the rooms look so inviting, you’ll be cured here,
how wonderful,
that we have groundbreaking technology to fix your brain
when we tell you it’s broken.
how amazing it must be to be you,
this opportunity
to be chained down by something other than fame,
you look so beautiful!
i have to have you, you look so beautiful!
we’ll keep you here because you look so, so beautiful
when drool leaks from a mute mouth.

there’s a lot of things that people say never existed,
like atlantis, and the love between you and i,
but i am not here to confirm or deny either assumption,
merely to speculate what a world would be like
where you can breathe underwater,
and i can drown comfortably,
and we are together in a place that isn’t real.

before i get ahead of myself,
i’d like to talk about sailors,
whiskey-drunk and singing sea shanties,
and i’d like to talk about pirates,
and the difference between the two.
what i really mean, obviously,
is that i’d like to talk about sirens,
and music, and keaton henson in the middle of the night.

things hit differently when it’s three in the morning;
i’ll be able to shop for groceries and write essays
and exist like a real person until nighttime springs around,
and then i’m lying on my bed catching stars
on the ceiling, hitting myself on the head
to deserve a glimpse of you.
only when everything goes murky,
and i see atlantis in the mist of reality,
am i satisfied.

am i satisfied?
it’s a loaded question, yes,
but we’ve talked about pirates
and we’ve talked about grocery shopping
and i think we’ve exhausted the laundry list of small talk,
so let’s talk about atlantis, instead.
let’s make plans like we used to,
and you can use my spontaneity
to make another girl love you,
and i’ll be alright as long as i have a bank of imagination
and a sea to drown in.

sorry - i don’t mean drowning.
i mean that everywhere is connected in some convoluted way
by oceans, and if i can stretch my heart miles out
then maybe i’ll find something that i can hold onto
when the world is moving too fast for me to grasp onto anything
except the possibility that one day,
i will die, and my body will sink,
and perhaps you’ll sing siren-song at my funeral.

i want to take you to a revolution.
i want to take you to the barricades,
and push a flame against the brown jacket;
as wasps on bicycles whir past our ears,
and we laugh in the sun. we laugh in the sun
and it smiles back.

i want to take you on horseback through the prairie,
cowboys of the untamed west,
and halt as the dust tornadoes around us;
as wasps on horseback threaten to trample us to death,
and we laugh in their faces. we laugh in their faces
and they retreat.

i want to take you to a coffee shop.
a coffee shop, if you get what i mean,
and tell stories of how this is how the world should be;
as wasps in business suits spit on the ground near us,
and we laugh at how it glistens. we laugh at how it glistens
and it sinks into immutable nothingness.

i want to take you to where the universe starts.
i want to point at the atoms that created the big bang,
and see in reality how everything is made of everything;
as wasps are born and collide into evolution,
and we laugh at creation. we laugh at creation
and it burns us into history.

this room is full of clocks,
and i’m learning how to be lonely
against your body.
even if you aren’t here now,
i can imagine that one day,
you were.

how beautiful it would have been
to see you silhouetted against time itself,
the ticking of the universe
in time with your heartbeat
laying waste to cliché
and just loving each other.

i still have not learned how to be lonely,
only how to write about it,
scratching the ink-crust
before it dries.
the walls here are pinned
down in eternity
with drawings and sketches
of how the world looks without me.

but the clocks still carry on,
or most of them, at least.
the grandest of them,
ornate and finite,
have stopped, displaying
meaningless times that i pretend
have significance,
like the most beautiful doomsday
showing when i die.

and when it does happen,
perhaps you will be in this room.
perhaps the ghosts
i am imagining
are merely remnants of a parallel world,
in which you are here,
and in which i do not have to confront
a possibility that loneliness will be forever.

there’s two forests that i’ve committed to memory.

one:
if i want to see the ghost of my seventeen year old self,
i’ll have to buy another bottle of citrus *****
and prepare my soft skin for mosquito bites
as i, drunk and free, roll around in the dirt,
still believing that my life has not yet begun.
i’ll **** behind bushes, with only hand sanitiser and leaves
to cover my body, like a modern-eve.
shivelight will sink onto my body,
my laughter conjuring up ageless forest-spirits.
my friends, also drunk and free, will make promises
that we’ll come back here one day,
that we’ll be like this forever;
we’ll never wrinkle and we’ll never age,
but our lives have not yet begun.

two:
i’ll consider myself wise beyond my years,
bu still young. still having the time
that i beg to be a virtue. still working out
where i want my line breaks to be
if i want to conjure percy shelley’s ghost
and change myself to fit a romantic ideal.
the only system i can break is to skip class
to skip stones into the river in the forest,
thinking of the girl i think i love, the girl i think i hate,
and all of the parts within myself that are mutable
and yet have not changed. i’m seventeen, and i have time.
i have time, and i don’t believe that i will ever run out of it,
even though each hour in this forest is spent
and will not return, i will convince myself
that i am merely solidifying a bank of nostalgia
that will make me smile one day.

i am crying, now.
i will **** myself when i get my first grey hair.

You’re reading this poem
and I’m picking at the hem of my dress
until the circle of fabric
that graced my feet
now sits uncertainly
at my ankles.

You’re not passive,
no longer can you claim actionless;
for every line you read
I’m pulling more
and now my knees are exposed
to the cold scrutiny.

Which line, I wonder,
will you like enough to remember,
and will it be worth anything
when you’re done?
I’m asking you this
not quite rhetorically,
but I don’t think you can see past
the thighs shaking in the winter.

It’s not your fault, of course,
not you, or you,
but you’re still reading,
and I’m still unwinding
the thread,
so let’s make the claim,
you and I,
that we’re both at fault here.

It’ll be too late by the time these words reach you.

There’ll come a point,
where you look away,
and I wonder which part of myself
was too much;
which part of myself
made you turn away,
and which part of myself
needs further work to be presentable
in anything other than excess.

I apologise. I’m rambling, and still pulling at the thread. The idea here is to make this harder to read, because ******* it, I won’t stoop so low as to beg you to stop, but it’s getting colder the more I pull. Soon enough, I’ll be bare in front of you, and what are we to do, then?

What are we ever to do?
It’s alright to stop reading, now,
because there’s no thread left to unravel,
just a pile of loose fabric at my feet, and
you can close the book, now. You can close
it, and I’ll pick up the needle.

She sings to you,
and you know she has returned
with food once more.
She’d **** herself
to throw it back up
into your mouth,
where it will ruminate
in your stomach
until you fly.

It tastes of love and bile,
and you lap it up;
there are things
in this nest
that you cannot name.
You try to
creak out the word
nourishment
but the crackle
in your throat
makes you sing instead.

She wants the best for you.

And off she goes,
her elegance beating
hard against the wind,
wings angelic,
archangel to you
as you watch the vultures
pry their slick bodies
from the shadows.

Take them in,
their greasy rapture
hovering,
and you’ve never understood
circles, but you know now
that you hate them.

It’s a relief when she returns,
exhausted,
stomach full.
There’s more *****,
and you would think,
if you could,
of what it must be like to die
alone.

Then, you fly.
You must.
You do.

Picture it:
one of us is foaming at the mouth.
Who really cares what the other is doing?
Because the spotlight
hangs like a noose against the overdose;
oh, how beautiful and pale white
one of us will soon be.

Flashback, one hour,
laughter plucking the chords
behind our tongues,
spitting slick
bouncing off the walls
of the tour bus.

Forward, one year;
I turn twenty. One day
I will catch up to you.
Minus five days, I sink
and think, god,
did they ever bury you
without the lights on?

I know. I don’t need
it explaining to me
that the inevitable takes us all
one day, that of addiction,
that gaunt-white
Dickensian phantom,
comes to claim back
the transactions.

Only,
it was never like that.
I never knew you,
and there was no danger
of losing my own spotlight
to your noose.

I’ll just go, now,
and pick up a repeat prescription.
I’m talking to nobody.

You said it yourself.

She plays mother,
wraps a scarf around her neck.

Red, once,
a proclamation of this,
of who she is.

In her letters,
she writes of little strong hands
taking her
up and up to the end of the world,
the breathlessness
of love, in which she thought,
and afterwards wrote,
and afterwards danced.

The world takes her
and she paints her neck
with something beautiful;
there’s a lot here
about getting to the roots
of it all.

And from this,
something grows.
Something, now, is cultivated
in the passive tense,
and then poets flock to her,
their little strong hands
grasping against her neck
for a taste of the bruises
and the colours.

But she is a spiral in herself,
a coil waiting to snap,
she is the roots of it all.
And the world wants
what the world wants;
to dig it all up
and plant something acceptable.

Still,
the silkworm woman
will not yield,
caught in the effervescence
of spider webs and champagne
she sings,
she shouts,
opens her mouth,
and silence pours out
of the wound.

What would I promise you?
If only you could take it - god,
the things I would do
if the world could be wrapped up
and handed to me.

And anything you take
might taste dissimilar
to the experiences you pull,
inwards and towards me;
so let’s circle round one more time,
and see if we can find
the spot where this all starts.

Who was it who said
that we are all in the gutter?
I won’t pay reparations
for looking at the stars,
nor will I claim space
against your chest
and pull pills from our hands.

We won’t **** ourselves this New Year.

When I want to wrap up
this narrative, it starts again,
like - ‘hello, who are you?’
or - ‘I remember how you take your coffee,’
or - ‘we never saw that star in the sky last time.’

So there are promises
I have never made,
but they are so dear to me that they beat
hummingbird wings against
the lower lids of my eyes;
my own goals lulling me to sleep,
and it isn’t New Year,
so I do not have a will, or pearls
to clutch.

There’s nothing fresh about making it.
Nothing new about the way
you pluck the mint leaves
and we swill them in our cup of tea,
with the silence,
and the begging,
telling me please, god, please
stop the world.

Well, we know how that one ends,
at least.

I wrote a love letter. This is not it.

But it existed,
you’ll have to take my word for that.
Existed being past tense,
because on the eve of adulthood
I took a glass jar
and my parents’ matches,
and I burned the **** thing to dust.

Which raises a question,
I suppose, of whether
things destroyed become ghosts.
Unnatural death sparking
life again in those same ashes,
a postal service with no return address.

How long before
the subject, unnamed,
would miss what never came?
Or does that even matter?
Yes, I’m asking you
to clarify so far what you think all this means.

Three years later,
I watched as everything imaginable
took shape in the picture of a flame.
Slight movement, repetition, almost,
against a television screen,
but the world became so, so wild,
and then everything was an oil painting
and I was Dorian Gray.

Slow, murmuring, hapless rubble
taking baby steps across my mind,
an experience of imagination
that says, I brought you a love letter,
once, and you crafted that into dust,
so here, take form from ash;
get up and be what you cling to.

I wrote a love letter. This is not it.
But I sent it to fate, to burn.

The fire, artificial, loved me back.

There should be a space
between my head, neck, shoulders,
but I know there isn’t
because I feel every inch of myself
against every other inch of myself
and I can’t move

from here.

I echo,
the voice of myself
barreling against metal walls
to get away from me,
words that defined me
defy me
until I am in the silence of the pipeline
again.

Still moving forward,
my body, parasite,
contorting and coiling
to chase the echo;
my back arched
in desperation to spiral
itself and become
the thing of constriction.

There should be a space
for me to breathe,
but I’ve said this before
and I’m doing this again;
me, in the spiral
in the constriction
in the pipeline of the thing.

I can’t crane my neck
to look back,
see if I’ve left a breadcrumb trail
of the metres I’ve moved
this year;
maybe I’ve passed decades in here,
biting my fingernails
so I never have to see
time move on.

I never have time to move on.

I’m back here again,
the echo behind me now,
coming around, coming around,
biting me
with the idea
that I was here,
and still am.

You wanna talk balance, huh?
You got a lecture to give,
and I’m not allowed to pour a drink
to get me through? Well ****,
if this ain’t ridiculous,
but I’ll listen. Nothing else to do
up here in the snow and the solitude and the shining.

You say things started alright,
and I nod, sip something unreal,
and say yes, my dear,
yes, perhaps I broke his arm
but I’ve vented the pressure
out of the boiler now.
And ain’t it a **** shame
that I don’t talk to Al any more?
‘Cept to sneer about the history
of a place that’s too far away to push
him back to drink.

So sure, tell me I’m unravelling,
and I’ll call you a *****
and you’ll lock yourself up in the room.
Give him the key, I’ll show him
that the **** in 217 is far worse
than a broken arm and a ruined career,
because this will take me away.

Who’s the other one inside me,
worming into a space
that I thought was mine?
Two in one body, a ******’ perfect
discount deal on everything
that can destroy a family;
check one, a son with a broken
arm and a fractured mind,
check two, a ***** for a wife,
and check three, me
the head of it all,
proclamation, divination, damnation
of the foundation of this stutter
looking over, overlooking,
a broken record skipping to the part
where I **** the pressure,
**** the boiler.

I’ll see you in the next one.
Fin.
.

.
Play.

I do not know which iteration of myself
I am pleading with this time,
but let me ask on my knees if I will still be you
when I get to wherever I’m supposed to end up.
When you say ‘try again’ I reset,
slam myself into doors and windows until
the milk of my bones seeps back
into amniotic fluid, and then I am here again.

I am here again, and now
I have new mistakes to make.

Pause. Confusion. Breathe. Play.

There’s a body in the glass,
fragments plucking themselves
through parallelities;
there’s something beautiful
next to something that stings,
and they pool together
like watercolours against a sky
where you can pluck your finger
from the air and lay claim to the spot
where you think the end might be.

If you want the end to be yours,
then take it. Tell me
how I should be going about this,
and if you can watch as I
ruin everything again, let yourself
become dust in the air
and surround me with the control
that I do not have.

I’m not in control.
I’m never in control.
And there’s something absurd in the air
that pushes the day to the horizon
again.

It’s up to you now.

Pause. Rewind.
.

Take four
and make mistakes,
wake in the morning
to check
that your fingers are attached
to the undeniable spot
where your hands end.
Watch the clock
in case it stops;
Dislodge the plaque
behind your gums
and scream in silence
at reflection-you.
Tick tock.
Script the helix
and watch it spiral,
dipped in mothers’ milk,
everyone, gather round
for the epiphany
T-minus twelve days.
Creation calls.
Victor Frankenstein here?
Making something other than history,
constriction in the surgical instruments.
The fate you are going to meet
is going to be so beautiful
for everyone else.
You are going to scream.
You know,
a lot of this is about birth.
Through these broken walls
I hope you realise
that everything here
is supposed to create life.
Even the mistakes.
Someday I’ll write a love letter
to Rosalind Elsie Franklin, like the ones
strewn about my bedroom,
where I tell her about my day
and ask if she would like to stir sugar
into tea with me
and call it a case study into romantics.
Now, pick your metaphor
and run with it, show me
how exactly you’re supposed
to be reading this.
And when you find the answer,
let me know.
Welcome to the beginning.

oh, ****, i'm so full of love it's spilling out of me
like bullet wounds, like i've been court martialed,
like i'm the pinpoint of a broken sheet of glass,
the part from which everything else shatters;
of course i'm the centre of the universe,
who else would be? who else could love this way,
fierce and terrible and hating? who else other than me
could break the universe for another chance at hello
or at two thousand and nineteen?

which isn't to say i'm manic. which isn't to say
that i don't cry in the shower and scream in the car.
i do. but when i do, i'm the main event;
nobody booked tickets to see anybody but me here.
don't kid yourself, world. don't make me laugh.
don't act like everything is okay when i'm breaking the baby-bird bones
of my fingers every time someone else talks.
me, the human stress ball.

me, twenty stories tall and universe-filled with love,
nothing else can even come close. i'm ******* godzilla,
i'm interplanetary, i'm that giant ******* marshmallow man
from ghostbusters getting shot at by the heroes.
maybe there's just too much of me to love the way i need
to be loved; completely, obsessively, like an illness.

oh, god, i want to be loved like i'm sick.
not just another hospital bed but the whole **** ward
all for me. all eyes on me. nobody looking anywhere but me
and oh, please, i'm fine, really,
i don't need all this attention.

like i'm daring the world to divert it away.

a birthday list of gifts:
- a fifth of whiskey
- a gun with one bullet
- the attention that people get from the crowd below before they jump off a building

i don't think i'm asking for too much here.
i feel like i'm one of those unlucky ******* born on christmas day
who get half the presents for twice the occasion.
how cruel must god be to birth me anywhere but eden,
into a world where other people exist,
where we have jobs and say hello to store cashiers and divide up our attention like slices of mandarin.

so where's this revolution i ordered?
where are the people making me important?
i need a cause to lead and a muzzle for my heart,
and i'll burn on and out,
not like a star, but like the end of the ******* universe itself.

and here i am, acting like i matter
when i really only want to matter to you.
i don't care how you want me to revolve
as long as i'm a lone moon. as long as the tides
are all mine; see, it's a lot more complex
than me playing easy villain or anti hero. it's not
been about me this entire time.

but i can't write poems about any other subject.

I wake up and you are still here.
You, of course, being something I can't touch,
a feeling, maybe. A high school crush on forever.
You, of course, are not really a you, but an us,
something I can't touch; a promise
to someone, of something. What it is about
I can't remember. What it is all about I can never
remember.

You are filled with every good day I've ever had
and every good day I never will. Your body bursts
with all the things I didn't get to do
because I was lying in bed, or crying in the shower,
or scared of what strangers would think of me.
When you smile, your teeth bare courage, click-clacking
with the memories of speeding down the highway and turning down
an invitation to a very, very quiet concert.

I can't tear myself into two neat pieces to hate and love you all the same,
I want to pick the meat off the bones and take all the parts I'm grateful for,
leaving you a skeleton carcass that gloats about everything that passed me by.
You, though, are not a meal and I am not a vulture.
I cannot separate the memento from the mori
which, still, leaves me with two choices.
Pretend none of it ever happened,
or accept the whole impossibly beautiful, unimaginably ugly thing.

I want to say please don’t leave,
I still have your coat in my wardrobe
and it looks like you can’t have gone far,
and please don’t leave, I don’t know
where else I’m supposed to stay
when it’s two in the morning
and everything feels like communion,
and please don’t leave, I am having to confront
how selfish I am.

So you’re leaving, and I’m trying to work out
if I should pack my memories into little boxes
and pretend that you’ve died, and you’re leaving
so I’m on the floor in my bedroom thinking
about going somewhere and trying to find Judas
or at least a tree with sturdy branches and the end
of a rainbow with thirty silver coins as compensation.

And now you’ve left, or at least made the decision
to leave, and here I am again trying to wave you off
with images in my mind of the Titanic leaving behind
everyone who couldn’t afford to die so grandly;
you’ve left, and I’m using metaphors to talk about this
because it’s easier than genuflecting and joining
a faceless pew - sorry, don’t think I’m calling myself Jesus
because I’m not. Really, I’m not. But you’ve left,
so don’t I have the right to call myself what I want?

It’s not like you’re here to stop me. There’s that word,
gone,
like it’s final, like you’ve joined the laundry list
of everyone who said they’d be there forever. You’re gone,
and I’m promising myself that I’ll stop being addicted
to people, only cigarettes and cheap wine and the feeling
of missing something when it isn’t quite packed up
into all of the final moving boxes just yet.

The only difference between God and Frankenstein
is the success of what they deemed their magnum opus,
and when it comes down to the end of days,
the Great Judge must turn his gavel inward,
lest he condemn his doppelgänger to an opposite fate.

It is a universal human experience to fail,
even more so to fail at the apex of triumph.
When God made the world, did he imagine
that it would go to waste?
Would it ever have crossed his mind that love is conditional,
at least for the flawed creatures he expected perfection from?

Does this, then, make God human?
Or just a Heavenly Lady of Shalott,
weaving a tapestry of emulation, of the very same
thing he cannot be.
It is considered blasphemous
to entertain the notion that God is inferior,
but is this born of punishment,
or of shame, of trying to save face?

It is stated so many times that the student will surpass the master,
and isn’t that what is happening here?
Perhaps God created trees, but humanity cut them down.
Destruction is just as artful as creation,
if not more so - there’s more finality in it.
It’s possible that God is too scared to ever end a story.

But we - our nation of Frankensteins -
will end everything.
Given the right tools, we’ll end the universe,
far beyond the reaches of this insignificant planet.
We’ll lay waste to God’s pride
and replace it with our own hubris.

We go down on our own sinking ship with smiles;
even if we can escape, we won’t.
We are cruel that way.
We will never accept fatherhood or responsibility,
but spite and death work hand in hand
at the fall of any empire -
what can be done to stop us?
We are fluent in the only language God speaks.

Here, at the crossroads,
faced with the Seraphim,
I cannot make out
what it is supposed to be.
There’s a muted song
speaking of angels,
but I am versed in simple words
and know that the root
is of a snake, of the very same
entity that led Eden to ruin.

Its face is confused,
muddled like it’s being viewed
through a foggy mirror,
wisps of steam and uncertainty
cloud any discernible features
until one of us has to speak.

It has no voice, nor a need
for a voice, so I lend it mine.
I suppose it will answer in riddles,
or smite me on the spot,
but it stares, like nobody
has questioned its existence before.

And the road is still forked,
with no direction upon which
to question the existence
of a Celestial City.
Still, the Seraphim bores
into the marrow of my bones;
I feel it rooting around in there
for anything to judge me by.

It’s uncomfortable, but I am alive.
There are a lot of things in this world
that must have been created
to **** me, like God himself
decided that his finest work
should be one of destruction.

For an infinitesimal moment,
I am illuminated by everything,
and I understand that things only have power
if they believe that they do,
so I press on,
taking the path of the left hand.

Welcome to the council of Jezebel,
here are your sisters, your not-quite nuns
who tell you of false modesty,
and how easy it is to strip yourself to the bone.
You’ll be staying here for a long time
because nobody else wants you -
that’s okay, we’ll teach you how to want you
without manipulation or coercion.

We meet on Saturday nights,
and there’s all the red wine you can drink,
you can gorge yourself on bread
and we’ll call the act of gaining weight beautiful;
we’ll teach you that it’s self-preservation
to deny desirability for fulfilment.

You have your own room in this cloister,
and you’ll never have to sleep on the floor again.
We have a library, and a soft workshop
where you can take apart all of your broken pieces
and learn that you’re not a machine
and can live without them.

If you want to leave, you may,
but nobody has ever done that
so we’re not sure how to deal with regression,
but we do not fear it -
we never fear what we do not understand
because we are feminine beings designed to learn.

The council has no rules - we live free,
no leaves covering our bodies as shameful.
We paint each other using berries and apples,
and at night, when all of the stars have nowhere to guide us,
we sing like free mockingbirds,
revelling in the liberty of what we have to ridicule.

Samson rips me limb from limb,
and I thank him, because God
gave him this power, and who am I,
lowly and lonely, to question
what flowing hair sinks beneath my body
as I commit myself to some kind of ending?

Then I am watching from below,
eternally reaching upwards, asking
for some recognition from either side;
which will claim me for their own?
Purgatory is a too-small coffin
for the only one who is neither good nor bad.

Samson steps over my body,
and I shudder in ecstasy,
perhaps to love a man was to destroy myself,
but false pleasure speaks testament
to how simple it would be
to pluck the hairs from his head.

Above me, Heaven song;
below me, Hell song.
Neither God nor the Devil will admit
that they are brothers singing in harmony,
and nobody will believe
the only person who can hear it.

And then I am in love with Delilah,
and how she did what no man could;
Samson was not flayed in battle,
but taken down whilst he slept
in his conceited neglect of the fact
that it was a woman who led Adam to bite.

Still, I am dead,
and Samson is not joining me.
His soul has been claimed by side unknown,
and here I lie,
coffin-sick and wondering
which direction I should wave my white flag.

I imagine how soft the hands must have been
to crush supple, christened grapes into wine,
and I sip for longer, staring down the Deacon;
avert my eyes from the wrinkles that find
some hand between, a drop of wine on the palm,
pushing the lifeless red to lips, mine.

With the wood of the pews touching bare thigh
and someone either side of me, I pray, silently,
for the ghosts of the Vestal Virgins who were, too,
boxed into Heavenly pastures, to come and sing,
with cherry-wine mouths, that Hell will be most glorious.

I wish women were priests, and think of how tempting
it must have been for Eve to find gentleness
when Adam touched his remaining ribs - the beauty
of self, she must have eaten an abundance of fruits
grown from male seed, before the apple speaks of tenderness,
of the mirror that shows herself. The cruelty of the snake
burns, and Hell bleeds as punishment for unwritten crime.

But how beautiful it is, to think that God exists!
To think of him lying dead, splayed out,
or perhaps curdling into spoiled milk, festering
in the fetal position, plumes of Papal smoke
encompassing his body, the smell of stale cigarettes
and spilled wine, and a congregation chorus-echo of Last Rites.

I have never been sure how to worship, only the imperative
of the verb - to worship - to allow God to enter wherever he pleases
and to leave wildly, like horses trampling across northern grass.
I have known for as long as I have held privy to thought
that my body is not my own, I must open the gateway to my vessel
and let him free me from sin; Lord, help me,
but I keep finding God in the eyes of a woman.

Finding her at a crossroads is like finding myself in the dark,
forbidden, and the easiest thing my hands have ever led me to do,
except I can no longer recall whether any hymns sung of Eve;
temptation crowns her legacy and we remain treated this way,
like grapes, and there is power beyond omnipotence in accepting
that if we are going to be crushed, we may as well hitch our last breaths
on the lips of women, praying, eternally, for God’s eyes
to have been burned out by his own, masculine light.

The first plague that sunk into us told us how to see red,
the anger, either alien or overfamiliar, turned inwards
into our stomachs, acidic and bubbling until we choked
on the waters, and still we begged the Nile
for relief, ******* salt from our tears.

And then there was discomfort, slipping into our beds at night.
The women, familiar with the dissimilarity of abject slime
merely sighed in the expectation of their husbands,
but the sensation screamed of newness to the men, and they ran.

When lice came, we scratched ourselves raw and there was redness again,
until the streets were serenaded by shrieks, and long fingernails became fitting
for women who sewed new clothes when the others ripped theirs apart.

The wild animals were like old friends who tore apart already broken bodies;
this was the time that the women sang each other to sleep,
all we could do was offer meek comfort to each other,
telling stories of how this would never have happened
were it not for the pride that never touched us.

Women worried when pestilence came, unforgiving and without discrimination
to our livestock; without food, we starved ourselves intentionally,
hoping with fragile limbs that there would never be enough meat
on our bodies to substitute for sustenance.

Pained enough, we thought we were used to it when our bodies turned against us,
without anger this time, only vile sores that burst in the dead of night;
we soothed each other’s wounds, our hands familiar with battle scars
and hoped that it would be enough.

The end of days could not come faster than when the fire rained down on us.
Some brave women, tired of being sacrifices, ran towards the flames,
either weary and half-finished already, or aching to find a burning bush
through which salvation may lie for those who did no wrong.

An attack on our senses droned into nothingness as locusts fell,
their bodies used to punish us, a concept of which we wept for,
we knew intimately, and sobbed not for the chess board
but for the pawns who must always fall first.

It was strange, how much darkness felt like reprieve,
in those three liminal days where our songs were unburdened
and rang free across the devastated plains;
oh, those days we sang so loudly that it was almost over.
They were almost free, and we were almost able to go back
to how we were different before.

But tragedy seeps slowly in the night on the burning wings of angels,
and our firstborns were stolen.
I, still young, did not bear the grief of mothers, but I was the third child.
It’s harder to be going than to be gone.

Herod’s fingers taste
of earthquakes, of disaster,
of the spit of the woman
he liked before me.

Potiphar’s coins ring
in my ears, on my fingers,
a pile of gold to drown
my splayed body in.

The two men play poker,
and I am the bargaining chip,
for their straight flush,
ashamed and disinterested.

Herod will not fold,
his pride venomous
against his meaty chest,
all wiry hairs and “I dare you”s.

Potiphar raises the stakes
with a flash of gold tooth,
and drags his finger along his neck,
slender and elongated.

The guillotine already feels familiar,
as the rules are plucked
like fresh grapes
or the only rotten part of the fig.

Herod beckons me forth
to look at his cards;
“yes,” I say,
“you are ruthless.”

Potiphar snatches me, now,
and I see his hand,
“yes,” I say,
“you are wise.”

Both men want something.
A prize to rip open
and sink their gluttonous lips into
like they do not know Daniel.

I want out of this room,
the sticky heat of summer
is beginning to upset
the restless lions.

Somewhere beneath the broad darkness
and the landslide, there’s a pocket
of nothingness, like the air bubbles
that oxygenate red wine. And somewhere
inside that, there I am,
mime-hands loving Stevie Smith
and all she stood for. A void
is just a void, and a poem
is just a poem, no matter how
you read it. You can bring this
into the church and line it up with the stained glass,
looking for a hidden meaning,
but I know this nothingness intimately,
like I know soft skin and the taste of *****,
and there is nothing to be found in there
that isn’t already inside you, except
maybe warmth and candlelight
and the idea that nothing is too far gone
to not be saved anymore. Sometimes,
I think people intentionally obscure what they mean,
like they’re not good enough for a line break,
and like it’ll be easier to rationalise being left behind
if they were limping from the start of the race
anyway. Anyway. Sorry about this;
sorry about all of this, I just really like how it looks
when you try to work any of this out.
Because it looks dismal. It looks like a pregnant
sundial churning out another day,
another day that might be Sunday,
but it also might not. It’s not like I know.
I think this stopped being a poem a few lines ago
and started being something to burn, instead,
but you can take the smallest of lighters
to the mightiest of Goliaths and they’ll scream
all the same. I heard that lobsters scream
if you put them in boiling water whilst they’re still alive.
I feel like that sometimes.
I don’t know if I’m the lobster or the water,
most days. I think I know now.
I think I know something, now,
at least.

The woman’s width is claimed by God;
milk and blood mingle into love,
and the King of Kings is crowned in the birth canal.
Invite all the strangers to gawk,
their gifts garish and presented with condition -
she will, one day, be an afterthought,
not a second, but a fourth.

She will gather with those who will one day mourn
alongside her, her hands fresh salt
and the rest of her the wound.
It was never a choice that came willingly,
but from Ophelia to Monroe
she will be remembered how men wish her to be.

When her face appears in streams and mirrors,
know that only the reflection has power -
she has plucked the cord from between the mountains
and now her womb will glisten,
slick with sweat and blessèd water,
in the fifth layer of the eternal Heaven she was promised.

The woman, with her limbs and eyes and cracking bones,
is supposed to rise, but the writing stops
after the men have played their little game of execution,
and scholars pick up the pieces
of the heavenly woman of Revelation,
grasping at umbilical straws for a meaning to what she gave.

Thin bible pages are dedicated to her lithe form,
her childbearing hips that filled out with the grace of God,
for Joseph’s carpenter hands to carve and clench
and give him cuckoo-sons,
but he is Joseph, and he can shout louder than she,
and raise hell to the Heavens
if he wants to.

She, fruit-bearing mother,
is only taken ****** to Heaven
because there was an angel
who requested something to pass the time.

I’m told to seek penance in the rosary,
and I want to throw the bible in their faces,
because how can they forget Lot’s Wife so easily?
How can trauma be so effortlessly muddled
in the word of the Lord?
How am I supposed to forget all that happened to me?

It is my fault, I’ve been told,
for looking back,
for dwelling on it until the bitter salt
becomes me, and I am a pillar,
but I will not forget so easily.

I cannot forget, if at all,
and those men in white robes speak testaments
of electric shock therapy until I am drooling,
and they are collecting it in a vial,
and it’s another story about trauma
that becomes seasoning for the lamb.

It is my fault, I think,
as I look back
and wonder what could have been done differently.
What I could have said or done
to prevent the men of faith
from ripping me to shreds
in their own stories.
Why am I,
not quite feminine and not quite fragile,
just a story to be told over beers and whiskey
about how I am a stepping stone
to your pillar?

Why do you get to be the pillar?
Why do you get to be the stone?
Why am I the salt-like spider webs,
stronger than your steel
but broken by your diamond hands,
born from the coal that I forged?

You are man.

You are named as such.

Here is stone.

Build a pillar. Call it yours.

Hello, Cain. Have you heard of shared glory?
I don’t think you have; that’s okay,
neither have I, for I am the One,
and nothing can take that from me.

You wish to be this way?
I have told you;
here is perpetual stone,
you have all the tools necessary.

Necessary for what?
For legacy.
For eternity.
Baby, hold onto me.

Angel, that’s what you’ll be,
baby, darling, mine,
take the stone
like man who lies with man.

What? I have betrayed you?
You should know this.
My love is Abel,
my love is not yours to give.

Unless, of course,
you want to take it from me.
Yes, that’s it,
take the eternal stone.

This is the history you want to craft.
Violent, ******,
and completely, utterly,
yours.

You are man.

You are named as such.

Here is stone.

Build a legacy.

Hate it; call it yours.

He puffs out his chest and takes up space for two,
long before the temple is destroyed.
Nobody has told him ‘no’ in a long time,
and nobody has ever taught him how to be humble.
This is where he stands, tending his animals,
spitting and swearing and squaring up to the pigs,
his face ballooning in redness, all the majesty
of colour given to him alone by God.

His masculinity is ripe with each slain animal,
domesticated and reared for sacrifice to please another,
another man, for whom pride is not a virtue.
Nobody has ever taught him how to be wrong,
and so he is never wrong, right up until the moment
when the stone is in his hand and the blood is on the stone
and the brother is in the blood and the history is given to the brother.

For the whole of time, there has been the trinity,
and with four alive, it was simple maths of which brother
must be cut down. The strong must **** out the kind,
and Cain will go down fighting one day,
but not today. Today, there is a victor, and a title,
and a promise ripped from the heart of the father
that nobody will hurt him the way he hurts.

It is the stone that cycles back,
like rainwater or bad luck or the static feeling
of something going very wrong.
These men do not lie, they deceive,
and Cain was granted protection,
until his house fell down
and his body, under the rubble,
for the very first time,
knew the communion
of what it is like to lose.

They said it was only prisoners’ flesh
that lions want to eat,
and I’m remembering that, when you,
named as Mary,
bear down upon me and I gasp,
pleasure-filled and psalm-sick.

Who is Daniel?
And moreover - do we care?
You tell me to stop thinking so much,
and that’s alright,
I’ll stop thinking at all
if it pleases you.

It pleases me.

Your soft lips, arching,
pounding stones for those who have never sinned,
I beg you to embalm me this way forever,
and you laugh -
you tell me that nothing is permanent.

I am crying.

The den is filled with misty tomorrows,
and yesterdays that I will have to confess,
but I cannot bring myself
to bring testament to you,
and make real the blood from your Eve-flesh,
because if it is not real,
it is not mine.

Can I deal with that?

Oh, Daniel is knocking at my door, now.
I will let him in,
and this is goodbye
to the giant of my love
that cannot swell further in my heart
for fear of aneurysm
or breaking.

I love this!
Being a sacrifice,
Father, I love this!
Oh, thank you,
thank you so much
for not asking me
if it’s alright to cut open my flesh,
thank you, thank you!
It’s such a wonderful feeling,
ah! It hurts -
thank you!
God is so merciful,
perhaps I’ll get into Heaven
with this offering -
what do you mean it’s all for you?
What do you mean I’m just a commodity?
What do you mean my flesh is yours to give?

Father!
I do not want this anymore,
I do not want to be a sacrifice
if I will not reap the rewards -
god, it burns!
The knife cuts me open
like Sunday dinner;
how is this not mine?
How is my flesh not mine to own?

Father, please!
I am begging you,
ease up, stop cutting,
I’ll repent, I’ll be yours,
I’ll open myself up
if it’s what you command,
but do not let my flesh
be given to someone else.

No! Nobody will know sacrifice
like I know it,
intimately and forever -
I am not yours!
My blood is not yours to give,
but you tie me down,
and god!
God!
It hurts -
father, Father, please, it hurts.

Shuffle towards the marrow of my bones, Abraham.
Know my eyes when you burn into them.
I am your sacrifice,
but never willingly.

Darling, please tell me which head you want on a platter,
and I’ll bring it to you. Don’t love him, please,
don’t love him, love me instead,
yes, I’ll decapitate myself if it means you’ll kiss my dead lips,
and please, love me until I die,
it’ll be an honour for a mouth like yours to mourn for me,
but please, don’t mourn for me.

I’m nothing in terms of you,
but I want you to remember me,
if only through the candles in the church,
from which my face burns in selfish wonder,
asking you if you’ve read my autobiography yet, and what you
thought of what I had to say,
don’t mourn for me.

Silver feels so sweet against my flesh,
so cool, like the pools of water
in which I sink myself,
waiting to drown like it’s the only thing that matters,
like all I can do is **** saltwater violently,
and I love you violently,
please, I love you,
but don’t mourn for me.

I wonder how you’ll cut my head off,
whether you’ll use a knife or a sword,
or the switchblade with dried blood that I showed you;
yes, I’m laying claim to this,
and yes, I’m begging you to use my own weapons against me,
but I’ll die anyway.
Let me have this,
but please,
don’t mourn for me.

Can I beg?
Can I ask you to **** me,
so that I can pretend it was my choice
to be lying here,
pale and emaciated,
kissing the knife against my neck,
calling you vampire,
calling you mine,
calling myself baptist, but lover,
don’t mourn for me.

I’ll call cool waters home,
I’ll think of the ocean,
and I’ll think of you,
and I’ll craft a manger from all of this dust,
because that’s all I’ll ever become
as long as you, Salome,
never mourn for me.

We were dying of thirst,
clamouring amongst each other
to lick the spit of women
like mothers’ milk,
we cried out, begging
for resolution,
for water in the drought.

Our lives were shattered,
children screaming
for the since-dried milk
of nourishment,
women sobbing upon
small corpses.

God, we cried.

And then you came,
a gift amongst the flint;
we had long since found fire
but you taught us
how to put it out.

It ached in the milk-light
of our bones,
a flowing stream
and tablets carved
of testaments,
of commandments
that spoke
of how we were destroying
the earth,
how repentance
is simply not enough.

And god, we cried,
we cleansed our sins,
and we cried
for water,
and you brought it to us.

Legs spread,
Mother Mary holding
women close,
the only sacrament
worthy of sacrifice.
Men falling in useless battles,
and women bringing water
to the dead.

We found a stream.
We drank.

Mother Mary sunk wide,
and god, we drank.

I remember dying, Father.
I remember it like it was yesterday,
because it was,
when you told me to save them,
and I saved them,
and then they told me I was you,
and I’m confused.

I remember it well,
the pounding of nails into flesh,
tingling in my heart;
I love another,
who is not you,
but could be
given the right light,
and opportunity.

I remember the pain,
sinking across palms,
and I beg for you
not to create any more stigmata
for the fallen;
I thought you loved them.
They do not deserve this.

I remember believing in you,
unwavering faith,
and I remember having all of that
choked into my neck muscles,
spasming to gasp for air
like crucifixion, again,
and I remember you.

Father, I remember you.
Do not think for a Heavenly moment
that I can ever forget
the role you pushed me into.
I remember your burning angel-eyes
and I breathe silently at Passover
so that my presence is unknown.

I remember what I am supposed to do.
I am supposed to save them,
to save them,
isn’t that what you sent me here for?
Just another errand
on your long list of people to sacrifice,
but I am here to save them.
even if that means
using your blood for my resurrection.

Let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how scarred they are;
how the callouses seep
into flesh, become part of me,
rubbing circles underneath the hood
of my uvula.

So let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how they’re only the starting point
for throwing up apples,
golden, red, green,
bitter and sweet,
all of them mine, to be choked
back into me.

So let’s talk about Mary-birds,
and the sacrifices they make
for their children,
and in doing that, let’s talk about *****
and how beautiful the sheen
of afterbirth looks in the toilet bowl,
and how often self-destruction
tastes like sacrifice on the way back up.

So let’s talk about my knuckles,
again, and the visceral scraping
against teeth,
and how much it feels like giving up
to not sit by the toilet
waiting for a sign
that this is somehow enough.

So let’s talk about being good enough,
and how I’ll never feel that way
until my knuckles mingle
with milk-white bone,
and how the rows of pews
are pearlescent,
tainted yellow,
with smoke and bile.

So let’s talk about talons,
and vultures, and everything that happens
after death, and let’s talk about
how one day the sea will swallow us whole,
and let’s talk about the belly of the beast,
and let’s talk about Jonah,
and oh - sorry - the sermon is over,
and the priest is taking confessions,
so let’s not talk
anymore.

I’m feeling the air on the thick of my tongue,
and it’s summertime -
it’s summertime, now, and I think it’s a Sunday,
so I’m going to smoke that Cuban cigar
in the quiet, against the sunlight.

I’m going to wait until the sun comes down,
and then the light is all mine to drink in;
not one, but millions of stars share the glory.
I’m blinking it in, like this will be forever,
and there’s something in me that wonders
why I’ve waited so long to live.
Why I always let the light filter
through stained glass,
and why I believed them when they told me
that staring directly at the sun
would blind me in forgiveness.

Why does forgiveness have to hurt?

I’m wondering if I can ever forgive myself
by kissing switchblades
and licking the flames from votive candles,
or if there must be an easier way
to do all of this.
But if I cling too much to what happiness could be,
then I’ll never know how to forgive myself
for not having it sooner;
they want me to live a good life,
but I am steeped in sin
and waiting to burn.

This - this thing -
is far too much about what they want.
Far too much against
Cuban cigars and Sunday mornings
in bed, and grabbing hold of life
with fists and hair and saying
“take this, all of you,
and roll with it.”

I’m paving my own narrative,
looking at barefoot beachfront walks
like altars, and I know -
I ate the fruit, and now I know,
that a long line of commercialism
will fool you into thinking
that the light at the end of the tunnel
means something.