Doctor Dearest,
when I ask you to drip sweetness into my veins
do not tell me that life looks better
with stuck-open eyes and *******.
I want to feel my arms light up with the anticipation
of release.

Do not prescribe me rest, I’ve had enough of that
to make an infant cry out in envy.
And anyway, my bed is stone
and my blanket is fire spun into thread.
Sleep does not tempt me unless
it is guaranteed.

Do not tell me to eat
or unfold your little pyramid,
a stack of sins that weigh on me
with the full force of an iron curse.
Food does not welcome me into its yellow-walled home--
it senses desire and punishes me.

Do not pull a magic pill out of your hundred dollar hat
and fold my fingers along its dusty edges
because I will crush it under my weight
and piece it back together with spittle-thread,
the glue of a starver’s refusal.

Do not promise me that time heals pain
when I’m not even an inch up this mountain.
My feet cannot balance on footholds
carved in mud,
and my hands were stolen
from a chest in my own ghost’s attic.
They haven’t been used in this lifetime.

Doctor, Sir, do not tell me that I am sweet enough
to tempt even the fullest stomachs
and the tallest men.
I know the taste of dirt
because it sours my tongue and scrapes my throat.
And I am tired, so tired
of digesting Earth
when I wasn’t meant to be fed.

You, the therapist,
tell me to imagine my uncontrollable urges,
shame, and despair
as reptilian demons lurking
below the ship that I sail across
an unknown sea with no land in sight.

I tell you that the demons are me,
many-headed and armed with unlit torches
that search for fire underneath my skin,
inside my veins.

I dig my nails into my chest,
trying to claw out the shame that sits on my heart
like a cinderblock.

There is no ship, there is no sea,
there are no heavy planks below my feet
to separate the humanness from the monstrosity
that twists my insides into red-hot twine
and bruises my skin so easily,
like it was meant to be.

You, the therapist,
cling to your metaphor with an iron grip.
I, the monster,
try to claw out of my own skin,
but I do not have a map,
and I cannot imagine your sea that leads
to the promised land
because my eyes are turned inward,
searching for blood to tame the shame
that burns in me.

Have you ever seen your breakup
At the bottom
Of a toilet bowl

Last night i treated myself
To a three-course meal
Of mustard, spit, and toilet water splashback

Have you ever reached into the back
Of your throat with spider fingers
Digging for the right language
To communicate your pain
Spoiler alert: you won’t find it down there

But you will find:
Thick mucus
Strings of blood
Nail polish chips
And stripped knuckle-skin

And every time you pummel your four longest fingers
Back-and-forth against the back of your gag reflex
You’ll be pushing yourself deeper
Into the grave that nobody knew you were digging

This morning I sit at the kitchen table in front of my breakfast
in my stock-photo temporary apartment
and try to shed my shame.
But how do you break up with the feeling
that’s anchored your mind to your stomach
for twenty-two years?
I do not want to eat this food,
this soggy shredded wheat and overripe banana.
I want nothing to do with food at all.
I keep trying to file a divorce with food,
but the shame remains,
regardless of how tightly
I hold onto food, to nourishment to a chance
that one day I will wake up naked
without shame on my shoulder
whispering into my right ear,
“You are too much, you are too **** much.”
Today the whispers echo across the apartment
and circle back to me on a loop.
“You do not need food,”
I watch the milk soak into the soggy wheat squares
until they fill like balloons.
I wish they would float away from me
and take the shame with them.
But today I listen and obey,
I do not need food anyway.

They gave you a crown of thorns
when you asked for roses
and anyway, the Earth has gone on strike
and the sun only beats down on wise men
who tan like leather and see stars in the light.

They gave you vinegar
when you asked for wine
but vinegar cannot imitate grapes
and grapes do not grow
when the soil does not sit in God’s hands.

They gave you milk
when you asked for blood
but the milk sours like lemons left to rot
and anyway, milk cannot fill veins
or pump air like lungs.

They gave you fire
when you asked for ice
to cool the head in your head
from the monster who made a home inside
and planted a dying garden.

They gave you wood
when you asked for bone.
Don’t they know that wood rots undersea,
and your limbs are swimming in the sheets
they lay down for you on a silver bed.

They gave you air
when you asked for lungs,
so you heave with bugged-out eyes
and your blue veins drain out
of your callused hands.

They gave you food
when you asked for life.
Why don’t they understand that food turns your stomach round
like a thorned crown
positioned on its side.

Your hands spell trouble--paradoxically,
in red bruises that swell and blue
veins that reach outward
past the skin,
searching for something fragile but intangible--like the song
of a rare bird or the color that a peach turns
one moment before ripeness--to cup in your hands
and then preserve
in the wooden box bolted down
underneath your bed--if only
you could figure out how to open it.

The box locks and unlocks
spontaneously
and you were never given a key.

Sometimes you hang from your bed
upside-down
and try to tease the box open with your eyes,
praying to the absent stars that your brain will fall
through to the top of your skull
and click open the lock with its flipped-over thoughts.

You wink at the lock and it winks back,
but does not reveal its contents
and only flirts with the idea of openness.

After a while you swing yourself upright and lie with open hands
until your palms’ little collection of colors and sounds floats toward the ceiling
in an exhale so quiet, it borders on silence.

And you close your eyes,
allowing the darkness to empty your mind
of its divine fullness.

Scene:
  
3 A.M.

The Husband and The Wife lie in bed,
asleep.

The punch line:

3:02 A.M.

The Wife, stubbornly inert,
had not yet shut her eyes.

She is practicing the art of stillness
in the midst of a bloodbath

3:05 A.M.

soon to be brought about by her own wretched hands.
Above the sheets, she grips
the mirrored blade she stole from Williams-Sonoma
at 12:12 P.M., yesterday.

The husband breathes,

3:15 A.M.

bathed in sick, sick ignorance, but,
as the wife knows in all 206 of her bones,
not a drop of innocence.

She does not concern herself with the (During: 3: 51 A.M.)
****** itself,
even as her weapon slides cleanly between the goal-posts,
because she is already four steps past this act,

4:15 A.M.

scrubbing herself down with lye
and transferring the stained dish-rags from Wash to Dry.

The Morning After:
doesn’t really matter, it is all a performance
directed by necessity.

The wife stands at her kiln
(what a strange and extravagant wedding gift)

8:00 A.M.

and convinces herself that innocence
is a four-letter word, used exclusively by lying
men like The Husband--
who speak only in threats and backhanded
compliments.

In their fatal blindness, these men lie down in bed--
so very stupidly--
with the targets of their rage, the twisted products
of fear and resentment and bone-cold courage.

And The Husband stands tall with his cruelty--

Even at the moment of death (4:00 A.M.)
Even in the wake of his own burning flesh (8:01 A.M.).