Calling me “too much” is a lazy way of saying
You don’t know how to fan the flame of your own fire.
Does my brilliance upset you?
It’s not my fault that the anger runs through my blood like a snake
That settles at the base of my spine
And infuses my light with a red tinted hue
That screams I am NOT to be messed with.

The tongue I hold in my mouth is as sharp as a dagger
And it can spit barbed wire as easily as it can French kiss.
To deny the way I ****, destroy and scream
Is to deny the way I make love and sing universes into creation.

I am not white or black magick.
I am chaos magick.
And I will destroy as I sing Kali’s name,
And hang the heads of men like a garland around my holy throat.

There have been hearts of mine that have cracked under the weight of easy love.
They hold a melody that I have hummed over and over.
Sometimes it begins slow,  like waves crashing on an empty shore.
Sometimes they haunt like a ship with a sail set fire.
I wonder where I will find the next incarnation because I am starting to tire.
The faint ring of intoxication has all but left my soul dy.
I hold a heart who screams in anguish at herself and every lover.
I home a soul too big for this body,
And she craves a song to live by.

I grow gardens between my thighs
and bloom roses red like rubies.
My spine is lined with barbed wire for those who dare to climb me.
I bleed rivers of deadly nightshade
and sharped thorns between my shoulders.
Every inch of this golden body is dripping in amber honey.

Coo words at me one more time-
I've never been keen to believe you.
Knotting promises into cord to cut me,
I'll never be someone you're a part of.

The lies my flesh has told you
Has put me at risk for you to fall in love with.

But I am not responsible for the way my body shatters your expectations.
You cannot shame a sinner without a shame for sin.
Or a lover in love with the way her body bends.

And the silence I keep for the way you make me quiver
Is not an excuse to make your misery quicker.

I have loved and lied to plenty of men
The biggest I've told is "it's not in your head."

I exist in a dimension you deserve no part of.
My love is eternal but you've only ever been lusted for.

The golden seal you've placed at the end of your tongue
Comes undone at the edge of my teeth.
And I peel it back
Slowly
At First
Like a fruit too delicate to eat.

I've worked for hours trying to unwind it.
An incandescent veil beckoning me to cross it.

"Can't you see what you've done?"
But my bones have been stripped for years.
They've been leafed in silver, chrome like a future I want no part of.
Still, like the way you looked at me.
When I pulled away your molten flesh and left you exposed with nothing but your sin to greet me.

I taste like heaven and hell.

Like the nightmares you had where you were left in the middle of the ocean.
Drowning
You woke up crying.

Or the one where you watched everyone you loved die.
But
It was you shooting.

I taste like the hidden corners of your closet where you keep your diaries.
With pages filled with how you’d touch me.

I am the burnt sugar on the edge of the pan.
The drops of ice cream that leave your fingers sticky.

I have been told
Twice
By two different men- that I am the most defensive person they’ve ever met.
My skin too thick and my tongue to sharp
(I am supposed to be easy and soft.)
But those men didn’t tend to the garden of my mind or flesh.
They never sowed the seeds I have spent years tending
Or even tried to open the gate I have built with my calloused hands.

Do not judge this mind if you aren’t willing to ******* soul.
There are roses here that don’t need any other hands to prune.
And never forget-
I am of the moon and stars.
The rivers of this body don’t need your approval.
I was never meant to be the clay molded in your hands.

Lying on my stomach I remember the way your fingers felt unbuttoning my flesh.
The way your teeth left cursive along my spine
Beckoning me to open like a book that you were never allowed to read.
I will unfold for you with the promise that you will only sign your name in blood
Along the edge of my sanity and only if you take me out of my mind.
I am not looking to lay anywhere except six feet under
Where I can feel your fire without fear of burning myself with your flame.
So I beg you-
Cover me in gasoline
Strike me where you please
And leave your sigil in my ashes.

My life is a work of art
But it has never been scripted for you.
It doesn’t have to taste sweet on your tongue.
It doesn’t have to be soft or comfortable.
You do not even have to enjoy it.
No.
My life is not for you to consume numbly.
It is not meant to be a safe space for you to form opinions.
I am still carving out the obsidian I’m crafted from.
And I do not have to listen to you to know where to chisel.
I have never written for you. Or loved for you.
With you maybe, but not for.
My life is not meant to be eaten like an apple
Whose core is too harsh.
I am poison.
And I never told you to taste me.

You came to me in a dream once, with crystal covered mountains dripping with nostalgia.
Ice cream on your tongue tasted sweeter than you ever did. You apologized for that too.
I have carved a path from the ice to trek for days that felt heavier when there was no one to miss- no distraction from the shell that I have worn that has formed from the inside out.
I think I am softer, more tender, more loving than perhaps I actually am.
I am the rigid shell of a soul who is too scared to feel everything that should be felt and now I am left to wander in snowy banks with the boots you lent me that never fit.

Come kiss me.

I will put away my teeth for you.

I will find the softest part of my skin and let you touch it.

I will not be hard or walled up.

I am spinning around myself and talking in foreign tongues.

So I can find a way to tell you-

I am hurting but I am still enough.

I think my heart may rip out of my chest.
Today I woke up feeling like I was still asleep. I don't think I washed the dreams off my skin.
I am typing with a bandaged finger, a testament to my carelessness.
I don't know how to guard the things that matter most. I am casual. I am not careful enough.
I don't know how to hold onto things before they change.
I am a human wearing a chameleons skin but I am not predisposed to adaptation.

I am waiting for you.
Under the Full Moon clouded, and silent. I hear nothing but the summer night.
I, I have never met a storm that strikes as quietly as you- unsure of whether to leave with the breeze or hit like your eyes have been waiting and casting their gaze on me.
You tiptoe around the cracks and creaks and bends of my rivers and I wonder if there will be anything that is uprooted from your embrace.
Deadly is the night but I have seen her long before you arrived. I am worried that I will not feel the warmth of the rain in June.
The only rain I want to feel is you.

All I want for dinner is you.
To taste leftover Chinese food on your tongue.
I have always been easily amused- but you- you not so much.
So I will wrap you delicately and consume you inch by inch.
You will taste like coffee and lavender lemonade. Like 2am French fries and insomnia.
Your flesh will feel like tired limbs and early mornings. Like hesitant kisses and Full Moons.
You will be warm. Warmer than me- so warm I may melt.

I am not scared of the dead.
I am scared of the living.
I am scared of broken bones.  
Of the way they curl my skin like pages torn from an old book, simply by slicing my flesh with their words.
I have felt enough for this life and the next.
I have no fear left for the deceased.
For the ghosts of those past. They hold no power over my mortality.
But the living- they have stabbed and ripped and cut like I am an animal ready for consumption.
I am not scared of the dead.
I am envious of their peace.

You make me feel like a wolf under the full moon.
I am howling for you.
I am calling for you.
I am trying to live in the way you make my skin curl and shed. I have never seen anything like you.
You make me feel like I am the ocean-
I know nothing but to surrender to your push and pull.
(I have never been a good swimmer)
You make me feel like I am going out of my flesh for you. For feeling like I am the only one who wants to see your craters or the way you move yourself against the inky black sky.
I cannot be the only one who is weak to your gravity, but I swear, you will never find someone who floats like me.
Or breaks like me, even. I am stardust captured in skin and bone. You are the moon and I am your own.

I felt the Strawberry Moon on your fingertips. You traced it on the palm of my hand. Your magic is different, I felt it, it was softer than I’ve ever been. You touched me and I felt velvet crushed against my skin. I heard my heart stutter your name and then cower against my ribs again. You draped yourself along the lines of my hands and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t seem to let you in. I am an open palm waiting for a knife and my fingers curl against the blade without a fight. But for you, I have melted and left a stain on your skin. I have felt the trace of your fingertips and I wonder if I’ll ever get back to how I was again. Your strawberry rays have captivated me, I swear, I know nothing like you. You wrote your secrets on the palm of my hand but I couldn’t understand the language you left them in.

It felt like the cement floor had open me up and enveloped me like a rib cage longing for a heart. I was slightly out of grasp, or just slightly out of touch. I have never heard the night sky sing like this with sadness or the cooing creak of cicadas. The red church sat with judgmental green doors blinking at me as strangers walked the steps inside to see a home I have never known or wanted. I have never needed that sort of love. The medicine I have tasted comes from binges of technicolor cartoons on nights that lasted too long. Time has been running out since it started and I can’t tell if it’s better to count what was or what will be. And the church with its emerald eyes has sat with its gaze cast at my window, as if to say I am picking wrong I am picking wrong. I cannot escape the anvil that straps itself to my chest when I go to bed. Maybe someone is praying for me.

I was told once that apathy was in my blood.
Climbing like squid ink midnight black through the ocean begging for the forlorn sun.
I have seen atrocities in these veins of mine, calling to the moon for forgiveness, I have howled a hollow cry- it has made my bones crack.
There is no room in these ribs for complacence. For apathy or for those who don't protect the petals of the heart that I wear like a fruit ripe for picking.
I am delicate but I am not hollow. I am full to the brim and I will run my tongue across the dripping pearls of honey which leak from my sides when roses coated in gold ***** me with their thorns.
I am not scared of the weight I must hold to carry these onyx bones.  I am not worried about apathy. I am not worried about the way my blood will curdle when it is tainted with poison or lust or desire. I am not worried about the way that I will sound when my heart is ripped from my chest and held between calloused palms.
I have never worried about the song I will sing when I have nothing left on my lips except the shallow cry I will leave to the world- the one that says
I have loved and I will never have to be enough for you.

You have chattering teeth that spill like oil hollographic on wet pavement
Lying between rows, saying that I miss you is not the same as

I am lonely (but don't know how to be alone)

And the ghost that resides between your bones was best suited with flesh
Far from that whose felt heaviest when it was close to yours

(Mine)

You have found the hole in the wall, the silk stained sheets drenched with sweat that poured from your skin when the words

Like and love

Were intertwined with once upon a time.
But you have hands grown cold like the drink you held between your palms when you realized that you didn't choose me along

I chose myself

I fell asleep to you after binges of Chinese food. And movies playing too loud, warping my mind to include translucent holographic dreams and 90's cartoons.
I am used to quick moving waters, cutting the banks of the rivers that flow through my bones. I am versed in their tongue but not quite you- stopped and steady after nights of solitude.
How can I sleep with insomnia that tastes like the sweetest dessert that has ever graced my lips, my tongue, my skin. I am too messy to be compartmentalized. I am too messy for you. I am too messy. I am.

One day someone will make this body of mine bloom like a garden of wild roses.
I think I would pick each petal off and dry what remained.
My body is a desert but my roses don't need rain.

I want pieces of you like the landscape that surround your bones.
I want you like the moons that engulf your soul.

I want pieces of your mind engraved in mine.
I want each continent of your flesh pressed against my own.

I want your teeth cutting boundaries of where no one else can go.
I want my body to be a Mecca but only for your own.

I have nimble fingers that creak and crack at the thought of weighted limbs and tangled flesh.
Like the waxing moon pulling off each of my nails-
One by one.
I am scared of climbing with broken hands.
I am versed in lust but love I have only thought of as
dripping
From my tongue after morning tea.
I am not who I think I am at all-
I have always been afraid of lovers who pull the zipper of my flesh.
I am not as naked without my clothes as without my bones.
I have always worn them crooked.

Today-
I feel special even though the sun has set the exact same way.
Maybe I am finally the the moon, or maybe it's just you.

Romanticizing fantasy or refusing to see what’s in front of me-
It has always felt the same.
I have never been scared of silence and stillness
But I’ll take it back again.

I will steal your soul and bones without condition.
Like barbed wire rooftops-
I would kiss your sorrow sans inhibition.

So take me or break me, it's really all the same.
I'm the mirror that shattered and sliced your fingers
                         -your favorite superstition.

You are tangled memories and oh my god you had your grip on me. You planted your seeds and wrapped your fingers around my ribs and warped the cage that homes my heart, my tragedies. You tangled my flesh and stole my skin and I think that’s a sin- you were always my favorite sin but you lost me oh my god you lost me and you left me in the cemetery to decay in the breeze. You’ve gone and left to find your home in someone else’s veins but you’ll never find bones that break quite the same as the ones that I wear. You were gas stations and memories and cigarette smoke you kissed onto me. You were gin and sin and poetry read in your bed as your flesh was pressed against me. You were rooftops and coffee shops oh my god you were mornings of lazy limbs and tangled trees-you were the nights I couldn’t sleep. You had your chance to be with me and lost your grip and set me free.

I let the television play as I write
So I can forget all the static in my brain so I can forget all the buzzing in my ears
So I can forget all the thoughts running over and over.
You’re a rerun I’ve grown tired of but you’re on a channel I can’t get rid of.
I’m stuck and I wonder if I’m stuck on you or-
If maybe I just ran out of batteries.
I think your empty chatter feeds the emptiness more than the blood does in my veins.
You’re the sort of memory etched on my flesh that I turn the television on to forget.

Crush me between your fingers-
I will smell like fallen leaves.
Soft on autumn mornings I was caught between your teeth.
And I wove myself into your sweaters that you wore to stop the breeze.
Your cold set in my bones and I think I’ve lost all heat.

Bless yourself, you ended up in my poetry.
You call them poems, after all, and I'm sure you know this is as close as you'd get to having me.
Cast away the demons you claim sleep under your bed.
You know that even after making my skin crawl that you're all in my head.

Father, son and holy ghost-
The only thing I believe in are phantoms, but you already knew that didn't you.
So what's so cathartic about the way  you cleanse me of my sins?
Do you mask mine in your own, does my purity make you feel clean?

You're the darkest night when the stars don't want to be seen.
Laying ice upon my spine you see that maybe I'm not right for your skies.
You're stitches in my side from a crack that didn't show.
You touched me to pieces but even you have to go.

I'm trying to find what speaks to me in moments of lucidity.
Grasping at forgotten dreams of nightmares I've been conjuring.
And the lies I weave within myself have a taste like acid that my stomach's felt.

But no sweetness lies within my mind and no honey runs along my spine.

I find lackluster ghosts within my soles
Always telling me where I should go.
But heaven sent I am not
And I'm proving that with impure thought.

So why is it that in seconds of dreams I care not to know what's happening?
Can my soul descend from where it is
Or am I stuck inside this bend?

Eager flesh finds ways to claw in memories when nails are stripped to the skin.
Find pieces left with torn edges like tragedies but don't let your demons in.

Weave vines through your ribs and roses through your eyes, for this life you'll have to fare.
Cemeteries feel so empty without your bones to bare.

And I beg you to bury the parts of yourself that remain unclean.
I only want your sin if its in between my sheets.

Find yourself among the sea.
(We all know you'd **** to be clean)
You're dissolved memories rotting with purity
Unobstructed details of a killing spree.

You're ragged knots hanging in the tree
Vain attempts at writing new memories.
But god my god, you're too blind to see
Hell is with you in your veins as you sleep.

So bless me, or curse me, really
Whatever's easiest for you.
Your gut wrenching sorrow is getting old, too.

Do me a favor
Just once for me, please.
Count your blessings four by four by four
And with the scripture you hold to the highest degree
Shout to the condemned what exactly it is that you see.

You are the earth  I think
I have caught my fingers in your vines before.
like- a promise spoken in runes long ago.
"I will love you even when the sun sets-
my moon, you have found a space like opal
you will always gleam like a stone in the light.
You wander like a willow in the winter and I-
I don't think I have ever seen so beautiful a sight"

You think you know me. But you see only what I show you. A reflection of the symphony inside my ribs, caged for eternity in a heart that you feel beating but will never hear.

I have shown you what is lost. I hope for redemption besides your flesh but I am not looking to be saved by you. I use you the same way you use me. At night, the darkness peers in and I allow it to consume me, the way you consume me.  Bite by bite. Inch by inch. Slowly.

I am a jungle and you must cross my tangled flesh intentionally, carving out a path decisively or you will be lost under the moon without any sympathy. I dare you to find a forest more treacherous than that of my heart. A territory uninhabited. You are a savage and I think I’d let you in.

You are west
black oceans on crystal.

And I have seen the way you move with lust
like a vulture
with eyes that crave flesh
like there's nothing left
                                      to
                                          eat.

I want it slowly.

Like smoke
Creeping from your chimney.
Like you- a house lived in once but
Abandoned all too quickly.
I want to be those bricks laid
one by one
meticulously.
I want your sin to move me.
I want your bones to break me.

I want it heavy
Like the bags of stone you gave me.
Quartz and onyx or an attempt to save me?
Like you- molten flesh cooled quickly.

I think I would die to have your soul inside me.

I am trying to unweave the narrative that I've written in my mind that says pride is a sin.
That says- other people have the right to love your body but I do not.

And I am trying to navigate the space between where I see my body, and how others see my body because I've been told it's not a space that is safe for swimming.
The water is too deep too rocky to salty for life.
For me.

I am not scared of drowning anymore.

You're like the sweetest apple that has ever graced my lips.
Like Eden.
I could eat you for hours.
And taste every inch of your bruised flesh
(and love it all the same)
Nirvana is
nothing
Compared to the nectar that I have found in your skin.
Even at your core you're heavenly.
Temptation couldn't escape you even if she tried.

You taste like heaven.
I swear every inch of your skin is woven from amber honey.
And sometimes I think you are my Sun.
And that I am
Weak
To the pull of your gravity.
I could orbit you for eternity and be caught in your spell immortally.

My body sounds like an ocean
Like waves kissing the shore
The way my flesh stretches round my bones
In an embrace that whispers “till death”
Like a lover who chooses herself
I have picked you over and over
And like the shoreline
I
Will
Never
Stop
Chasing
You

If my flesh had a language it would be cooed in stretch marks.
My skin would spill its secrets in a whisper
Saying
"Look and see how much you've grown.
How beautiful you're woven, like a tapestry of love and stardust.
And I think you should know there are
no
mistakes.
Every crook and crevice of your soul and bones are adored.
Wear your marks like kisses from the cosmos.
Every inch of your body is like opal gleaming in the sunlight"

How strange to
miss
a city.

Like saying:
I miss the way you were loved.
The way you felt busy and full
I miss your gloom your cold
your
sidewalks that felt
                           (foreign)
with
new boots to fill and new skies to kiss.

I miss you like a city.
I could navigate your walls
For
      ever

And she said:
       “ I have been here before
   Swimming along your rocky shores.
And I have felt your waves echo along my ribs
and beat along my heart.”
I have
       seen you in sandy planes like Mars.
                (You) have transported me to a world I feel but can’t remember.
I have
           wandered here along these rows of pines.
            They turn their faces to me like ghosts I’ve spoken to
            but remain nameless with unfamiliarity.

But I have felt these tremors once before.
walking along your rocky shores.

You are west. Black oceans and dream worlds
Laid out like mystic landscapes along ridges of desert that become transparent
Against luminous flesh under moonlight.
Tapestries woven from threads of destiny and braids of sunlight and
Crystal crafted witchcraft that ventures into Hades.
The deepest black in ink ridden scrying bowls
That sing of kaleidoscopic visions and prophetic daydreams.

You are wilted
And I have found you climbing iron lattices that I have only known in passing
Like the forget-me-nots you’d pick the petals of
“He loves me
He loves me not”
If only I could become immortal.

You’re my favorite word.
And I could take you in endless combinations
Letters lining your spine like a poem you read as a child
The one where you had felt love for the first time
But had forgotten that this is what it sounded like.
You are like medicine
That I didn’t know I needed but needed.
Your warmth is like the summer air.
And I think you taste like the rain in the moonlight.

I want to give you the space to exist, to settle into the cracks on wood panels and floors that have heard your footsteps in and out again. I could ask you once or twice, where your body goes when your mind’s asleep and where your voice sings to the heavens in moments where your body feels weak. I am afraid of the answers and the places you escape, the darkness is kinder and a muse that will never break. You have existed in mountains and suns glistening anew but like a supernova or a dying star I won’t know about you until I am gone too. I could ask you in the moments when your body surfaces from ocean tides where it has gone in the Summerland, but the realms you travel are dangerous and you dare not hold my hand. But I have lived a life and a half for you, or perhaps with, but you have never swept my bones of stardust across your tired cheeks. I shall not miss the forlorn darkness you were too scared to keep.

Have you found it
Because I know you've been searching through snowy tracks restlessly
Through empty valleys and moons of full
(I think you pricked your finger on a thorn)
I've seen your footprints
Heavy in the heel like you should know where you're going but can't remember
And you carry that weight past truck stops and treetops. Past rooftops, kissed with smoke
I've seen it
Covered in white fur coats of snow glistening
And I think you walk too quickly to catch it
So I'll sit here and wait until your bones feel warm once again
So maybe one day you can catch me too

I’ll let you see me. And I can shed a cloak like stardust if you promise the darkness won’t scare you away. I know it is frightening to see truth turn from white to midnight onyx in the span of half a day. I could be gentle too, and soft like morning skies. An alabaster shell you’ve polished well, a haven for saltwater tides. But I will fold and curl and settle along the veins wrapped in your skin. I’ll nest and breathe and home myself in pieces you’re terrified to miss. And when the sun rises and greets your dawning skin, I too shall find a path along your bones and leave before the light comes in.