i feel your hands.
youre slick up to your wrists with discharge,
disgusting. they touch my waist, i recoil.
i feel my insides wither up and retract like
a plant without water, a mercy; like
running away from whats already in you.

you have beady eyes and your tongue is a knife, and
i love you all the same.
your silence is endearing yet i push to break it,
spitting and swallowing seawater; fighting the current,
screaming,
"why cant i get through to you?"
you dont know and you never will.
youre wearing my jacket.

i should probably try out the nicotine patches. i love you, im sorry. are you okay? yeah, im fine. trembling like a sewer rat and breaking my fingers like my mother when i was still in her womb. i think i just wanna stay here forever. heart shaped bruises and strawberry kisses, we’re like a ******* katy perry song. i think of the way your hips move when you walk, and it silences me for a while.

your intestines are malevolent, plotting. one day they’ll mutiny and **** themselves to get rid of you. this is the most selfless thing you will ever do. the smell clings to everything in the room.

you’ve set everything into motion. it spreads like an outbreak, you can see the romance in the epidemic. the sound fractures like light, a splintering, a prism of ignorance. you press your body up against my lips and i press back harder.

im torn. i feel my body warping in two different directions. it’s kind of sad, isn’t it? the holidays are full of, are you driving yet? are you dating anyone? what school do you go to? i remember when you were THIS tall!

i hate the way my skin ripples, clothed in snot soaked rags and knowing the difference between a variable and a weapon. you kiss my neck and i shiver. i love you. i miss my brother.

i tread; ambiguous, i can't get a word in edgewise.
my lips split and ooze in the chill, pinprick bleeding, you stare at me with dewy eyes and i feel almost everything. she said, dont
worry, almost caustically, searing the flesh.

1. they both pricked their fingers on junkyard knives and pressed them to each other. this is what it means to be lovers, she said. now we’re bound to each other forever.

2. i dream of strawberries and whipped cream. awake at midnight with crossed eyes and i bleed you out. i hate your appendages and the way they move. i hate your skin and the way it pulses.

perhaps i have not been completely honest,
with you, or myself,
i lie so often i start to believe it.
the worst of me is in the detail.
1. girl, puking blue raspberry svedka in the backseat. covered in bruises and tripping over herself in the january snow, too drunk to stand.
2. girl, she likes it when it hurts. yours were not the first inside me, i lied about this too. the door didn’t lock so she pushed the chair in front of it, put her hand over my mouth, told me to be quiet. i closed my eyes and counted to ten; once, twice, until it ended.

i bound broken bones together in silence as to not disturb her sleeping, crunching adderall between my teeth and swallowing the paste with apple juice. i bandaged myself together every night.
i have been supporting this weight all my life.
“i never meant to hurt you, i
was just taking my share of the meat.”

you are as sick as i expected.

i crawl back into the womb,
dripping spit and licking my wounds.
this is no way to grow.
rising from the earth like a sapling,
i spill like cough drops,
like a sermon,
out onto the mossy ground and
into the world.
how i will learn to love it so.
oh, how i will learn to love this world.

what have i become?
its grotesque inside of me;
endlessly rotting flesh

i. i think i could make you real proud.
   i hate who ive become,
   all molten wings and soundless
   footsteps; i am a ghost in this house.
   i think i could make you real proud,
   real proud if i tried.
   smoke-smelling cave-dwelling
   teenager with nothing to do except
   weep for the victim inside of her, oh i
   cry for the ******* the outside too.
   oh how much you’ve grown,
   oh how much you’ve grown,
   oh how much you’ve blossomed,
   sweet girl,
   i haven’t seen you in so long.

i sip gasoline
like its medicine and i
taste the cough syrup

ii. i can explain why you haven’t seen me,
    i am too small for anyone to look.
    i am large in my mind. i fill up the room.
    no one notices.
    inside my head i kiss rooftops as i
    hover, small-brained and
    numb-minded like a bird or a
    teenager and i
    belong in that back seat, on that
    pavement making love with the asphalt.
    i nest amongst the darkness and the
    empty monster cans like
    a dragon hoarding its wealth.

i'd get high all day
if i could. but i must bleed
for the girl i lost

iii. we must fulfill something or else
     we wouldnt be here. we would be
     sick with worry if the birds migrated in
     summer; just like my mother
     cries herself to sleep over me
     every night.
     she chose this life, she chose me
     swollen and thick skinned, they say
     pregnancy changes your whole body.
     (i would know, wouldnt i?)
     i lay back, teary-eyed and red-cheeked,
     i forget my mother, i forget what
     she stands for, i forget my father and what
     he never stood up to, i forget that my heart
     is still beating, pumping, i
     forget that i
     am alive and
     i have so much
     worth left in me and
     i lay back, i lay back, i let them take me.