i only write in the dark in the night in the moments when i feel my eyelids fall heavy and my chest grow empty. it is only then that i can untie the bird from my sternum and let the creatures growing in my small intestines wake. the sky will rupture and glow pink and i will be none the wiser because while white elephants sing and paper mache dolls rise i will be here, in my final form in the sea with those who tried me like i tried myself. i am my own worst enemy.

I am fixed
to the walls of this house

so tightly joined to it,
this bed
through sinew and bone

thread, thread, thread

another plait into me

the night, the breed she is
with that ****** needle
and thread, thread, thread

knows I can’t stand within it
the vignette
the solitude

the white coats,
the men of the word
those in the mire of the clay
all prescribing the same thing

a hit of perseverance

“Oh, okay,”

“oh, okay,”

“oh, okay.”

I lick, lap at
the slow drip
so tightly fixed to where I always have been

don’t come in,
don’t go out

“I’m sorry,”

in the pooling of spit
one hand in the *****
reaching into the pit

the *******
night
I don’t say in vain

“Okay,”
“Okay,”
“Okay,”

she waits
loosens my thread
slips those little tethers
so much good slack

I run
take my hit of perseverance
I burn
burn, burn, burn
right up in the fire of day

she waits for the ash

the sun rises and sets
on the same thing, always

always
always
always

they don’t understand
those free feet, walking the narrows
I watch them all go
no wince, no limp

no thread, no spit

the way that it seems,
from my portion of shadow,

“Oh, okay,”

so easy ‎

hallucinations of wildflowers and flooding windpipes
yesterday
a fig
today
a bell jar

i wanted to
live in hope

why do i try at all

smoke
out the window
curls
like nothing ever
so simple

i wish i could
follow

there's not much point being here
there's an expanse
there're people gathering outside
i can't see them
here there
the empty passages that go on and on and
i haven't moved in years
curled into myself
empty confine
shaking arrowroot
dried to dust.

i thought i was existence
not yet
not yet
never.

feeling of regressing an endless motion
round and round linoleum
carpet
muffled stomach black casing and
stall.

movement is nothing but
the making into absence
of what was.

and three hundred years is
a body without sunlight.

my feet sink into the dirt, mud and grass and all things between my toes and in the cuffs of my jeans. it doesn't matter though, i'm where i'm supposed to be.
its the garden of eden, the apple of temptation. if only i believed in god, this might mean something more.