not quite over-the-counter but it works just the same, youre in way over your head, youre spitting and drooling and hacking out your lungs and you smile up at me in between the ******* and it makes me want to tell your mom not to worry,
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,
                    where did all this ******* saliva come from, for christs
                    sake, im ******* drowning in it. i think i want to be
                    violent now, i think its my time, i think ive been waiting
                    long enough for it. in my mind i still have my training
                    wheels on, you terrify me
you still wear that necklace, i saw it when you pulled up your shirt the other day in my room, on my bed, lately looking you in the eyes has been so ******* hard but i manage, i manage when i can, i pull you to my chest when youre on top of me because i miss the way your hugs feel,
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,
                     i still love you, dont you know that? lately ive been
                     crying and puking at nothing, these are the symptoms
                     i guess. i want you to be rough but its too soon for you
                     to hurt me; my parents arent home, do you wanna
                     come over

im spiraling. im spiraling. im spiraling. i didnt think i had the fight in me to light a fire this bright, oh god i am relishing in hating so hard.
     i dont breathe easy anymore. every bit of breath i catch is milky,
     heavy like fog, hovering between the states of matter. i want to
     destroy this vessel.
i bask in this violence. i hate every inch of myself down to my guts and this is all my own fault. i love the summer but ill miss that winter glow.
     i want to destroy myself. i want to grind myself up into powder. i
     want to force all this loathing into my throat and choke on it.

how am i supposed to write about being delicate when i am a pressurized ball of rage, coiled tightly like a snake reeling to strike, how am i expected to
write about the soft parts of myself when all i feel is this ugliness within me, swirling like a swarm of flies, dark,
dark like peeling away the layers of my skin,
imagine what i could do to myself uninterrupted.
imagine what i could do to myself uninterrupted.

how am i expected to love you when im overwhelmed with this hatred,
this loathing, ripe and so so so so close to erupting,
like a brain swell, and
how can i
explain this violence inside of me, so gory, so beautiful,
imagine what i could do to myself with this rage.
imagine what i could do to myself with this rage.

i am not beautiful. i am filmy eyes and dirt crusted nails and i want you to know that i am not beautiful. i did not appear here in a swath of light, all oozing with virginity, i appeared here with my mother kicking and screaming. my life has been years of lying in wait like a dog. i cant afford to be patient anymore.

he was vile, laying there all pitiful-like with his arms spread. "what happened to you?" i asked. he never responded, just spasmed and bled from his mouth. after everything i sat beside him.

the dawn was breaking then, and the grass was cold and slick with dew and ****** fluids--this was before northwest indiana set her cattails on fire. he looked up at me, not pleadingly. his gaze was full of understanding. his hair was knotted and covered in silt.

"youre going to die." i said. "youre going to die if you lay here like that." i always had criticisms. he told me so.

he rose with all the power he had left in him and ****** violently, separating the skin on his back from his muscles. for a moment i forgot to be afraid of him. with one last twist and twitch his bones

sliced through his pallid skin like butter and he extended his wings.

and suddenly i understood.

i left him laying there, all pitiful-like with his wings spread, on the pure homegrown indiana land.

he died, just like i said he would, because no matter what i always have to be right, dont i? he told me so.

and so; here it is. i fuss like a ******* her wedding day, bustling, bursting with trepidation. i can see right through your skin and you look nothing like the pictures; rotten, rancid, revolting.
     i look in the mirror.
     im just like my father.
and so; here it is. i scrape the black out from under my eyes with my fingernail and flick it onto the floor. retribution! i say, i leave pieces of me everywhere! youll never forget this face!
     that face? the one you loathed so deeply?
and so; here it is. i find myself missing the warmer months again, pressing dandelions into the dirt, too high to speak. the air was easier to breathe in back then; less pressure, less dust.
     i was soft as butter and
     now i will be as hard as a stone.

id ask you if you knew how tragic you looked but you just turned away. i cant stand being rabid. my blood is toxic, volatile. no one can ever hurt me.

i stand my ground, pathetic and puffy-faced. i dont want to be fragile, i want to have control. i am disposable.

i dont know how to explain this to my mother. hate has hands like a vice.

i. they crack under the pressure, complaining of headaches and the like. i'm on the countertop, thawing like freezer-burned meat. you approach like youre ready to pounce; hesitant. i assure you that i wont bite, not with my words but with my blood and the pattern of my muscles. how can you not trust someone so exposed?

ii. i trace your veins with fragile fingers, stopping where they split and kissing the skin delta. i pay extra attention to your pericardial cavity and breathe in the scent. i imagine myself nestled in your organs, flush against your trembling heart and your ribcage.

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.

i can tell that you wish i was softer,
i want to make myself more docile. i want to
pry my fingernails off for you, offer them to you as a libation,
let the auditory hallucinations do their job.
although small you’re a god nonetheless,
speaking in tongues i will never understand,
drinking flat soda because the smoke has clawed holes in your trachea and the fizz burns just a bit too much for your vessel to handle.
you take care of this body like you take care of mine,
alive;
floating, and
     in all the dimensions,
counting quarters in the back of the car.
     you are my god, and i am your fowl.
i swallow pennies, let the copper taste
     fill me up and choke me and
crawl up my spine.
     mold me like clay.

i think i have shed myself of you.
for years i felt you stirring inside of me like a caged animal,
spitting on stale bread to make it soft again, hanging up your underwear with clothespins on my small intestine,
so innocent and sweet and painful like
how a cavity forms.
i sat slow and bleeding like a ball jointed doll,
i wanted to press my thoughts into your skin like thumbtacks.
i wanted to feel your breath on my skin just once,
just once,
maybe once again just to be sure of the smell im destined to avoid and i
will never, ever, never not ever ever let you hurt me again because
some things can’t be forgiven and
some things will always be forgotten
whether you have a choice in the matter or not

you stand, all slack-jawed and purring like an ******,
pressing down on my cavities like a gas mask. this is my fantasy, this is me and i am dangerously ill.
i am sick, so
terribly, awfully sick,
as frail and withered as a stillborn and
heaving and choking up mothballs,
i can feel this illness in all of my orifices. leaking out like spit from my ears and
dripping on to your jeans,
all neat and tidy and squeaky clean like the smell of burning rubber.

i see myself in you and it hurts.
you are heavy on me, collapsing my sternum and by kissing my chest with your fist and
it makes me remember what love is. love
is broken glass and love is warm and reminiscent and
love is something you would like to forget and something you will always remember.
i feel it coming out of my pores;
oozing, memories of you on brittanys floor,
memories of me retching inside my bathtub and
memories of you smiling down at me;
i think of your tongue and how it can be so soft and yet so sharp sometimes and your hands that can be so smooth and yet so rough and
it embeds itself into my skull like a scalpel, medical grade and shimmering like your lopsided grin,
the doctors say ill never get this out of me.
(i wouldnt want to anyway.)

i promised you i wouldnt do this to you and i did.
i wait through crying. i watch you as your knees kiss my carpet ever so softly and i wait for the deafening sound of your hands against my ears to stop making them ring and i
wait for a break in your tears to mutter a backbitten apology before everything goes silent again.
through all of this my ghost remains sanguine and
he kisses my carcass with wanting and
i think of how i could never regret this,
not even if you lost your ****** job in the projects and
not even when you stop going to school or
stop pretending like you mean something to the world and
i think of his perfect smile and the way his hair falls into his eyes when he ***** me and i will never regret hurting you.
i promised you i wouldnt do this to you but i did.
i never meant to hurt you but i will do it again.

memories:
a half-drank bottle of *****. the taste of something foreign on my lips, soft and bittersweet like the fog in my brain. the realization that love is something you can never touch.
i can feel it on my fingertips like thimbles and glue, heavy and obstructive. weighted down with shower water and the scent of your shirt. i breathe it in. it tastes like ******.
i inhale hair pins. i take it all in, buzzing and whirring like an ******, all soft and fluttery between your thighs, i will never speak of this again.
i will carry this on my back until it breaks my collarbones.

there is blood here, all caked up in the sink drain and
washed clean off the walls.
i can tell from the marks my elders have left,
like cave paintings,
like murals,
like when children who don’t know any better splatter their finger paint kit all over daddy’s office walls but
what has been here cannot be wallpapered over.
i find comfort in the way that everyone’s hair smells the same here and i think, well, that’s just fine.

i remember sitting, next to her, on her basement floor. limbs numb and useless, pathetic. i looked her in the eyes.
“im done with the pills. really, this time. im done.”
i used to let her touch my thighs, so in return she answered me with translucent sincerity. the kind of honesty that wears masks.
“you’re just saying that because youre broke.”
this was before all those nights swaying under bathroom lights, clinging to the edges of the tiles on the floor and feeling the rot from in between the linoleum squares collect under my fingernails. i nodded in agreement, because she was right. she was always right, about everything. i learned to accept this and it soon became a comfort.
i remember apologizing. i remember always apologizing. i remember how she pressed her palms on the small of my back, giggling, “are my hands cold?” i shivered and recoiled, sorries spilling out like buttons for the sudden movement. “yes,” sorries spilling out like organs for the lie. your hands were never cold, i just never learned how to deal with the pressure. i still press on my bruises. i still can never get the hang of a temporary tattoo.
if i had the chance i would tell her i missed her. i would tell her how it took me almost ten years to get used to another pair of blue eyes, i would tell her i see her face everywhere. i would tell her how leo died and how ill see her brother soon, isn’t that crazy? isn’t it crazy how i haven’t seen john since you left me? i can see myself now, standing in front of her, skin glistening like vaseline. i see myself harrowed, cut open with glass, insulation spilling out of my guts just like her basement walls and speaking so softly you can barely hear,
“see? i can be soft too, i swear i can be soft too!”

I. I FEAR BEING POINTLESS
     i understand what you say without words,
     i feel your energy,
     i feel it flowing, animate, extending his
     tendrils and writhing like roadkill.
     you stand beside me. retching.
     re-opening wounds in spite of the hands
     that feed you because you just
     don’t have enough teeth to bite with yet and
     you comment on how this is kind of gross,
     isn’t it? the way it oozes like that?
     pulsing in my eardrums, i say no, this is
     beautiful,
     because i can hear what you’re saying
     like a deaf barn dog hears dinner bells

II. I FEAR I WILL BE LEFT BEHIND
     i feel dust caking, dry as soon as it hits the
     sweat on my eyebrow. i try to imagine my
     flesh growing under the weight of it,
     melding together, increasing in mass.
     ive felt heavier lately anyway,
     i keep scratching my legs ‘cause theres
     something in those veins in there, im telling
     you, it breathes at night when it thinks
     im asleep

III. I FEAR MIRRORS AND SCALES
     i keep remembering things i shouldn’t,
     i remember all the daycares ive filtered
     through. i remember (her), and her gameboy
     color and physiological tremor, speaking
     to me through the fruit snacks she fed me.
     i tried telling her how this felt.
     i tried telling her how inhuman i was, how
     something just didn’t feel right, is this
     normal? is this part of growing up?
     do you become an adult when you notice
     what’s missing? no,
     you become an adult when you realize you
     are made to break apart, you become an
     adult when you realize your joints are
     perforated, you become an adult when
     being fearless terrifies you.

(you collect phobias and arrange them on a platter, born from desperation, you feed into them and they respirate knowing you are absolutely nothing without them)

delusions:
i feel your energy like a lung collapse and
carry it in my chest like cholera, i feel it when i inhale and exhale and it rots the flesh around my ribs. i imagine living in this place and figure it’s not all too bad, insects boring holes in week-old ravioli unattended on the crusted over stove and the smell of *** and the humidity and small talk while we’re waiting for the drugs like how often are you and your boyfriend having ***? and are you going to the fair tonight? and where does your mother think you are?

hallucinations:
she speaks to me from the corner, her and her ***** fingernails picking marshmallows out of dollar store halloween cereal and flushing them cause she doesn’t need the calories and she tells me that strawberry blonde is her new favorite color. i imagine the deterioration of her teeth in my mind as a time lapse, i find myself wishing i was the crust in her gums. i find myself wishing i was the stains on her shorts, the feel of her hands, i want to be the knife in your back

disorganized speech or behavior:
it takes me a minute to realize she’s speaking to me, more like speaking at me, asking me why my hands twitch and i clench them so they stop. i want to tell her i think her crooked teeth are beautiful. i want her to tell me she likes the color of my eyes or the dip in my waist or the scars on my hands, she just tells me this is all part of the process, what process?  she says be patient, she says my time will come, she says she feels the same things i feel and i realize this scares me

i spit n kick like dew drippin off leaves,
i learned 2 b soft so i will b soft when i am brittle.
i think of the way i thought of u back then, lethargic at best,
pretendin like u were a god when really u just mistook all that drool for ichor.
im sure uve noticed by now im abrasive,
under the assumption that apples fall far from the tree and
“i swear that im soft, i swear my skin is thin and
i swear im bein honest,”
but ive nevr been honest, not even 2 myself,
cause i didn’t even realize i had walls up til u tried breakin em down and
i know i scare too easily,
its jus the way that i bleed,
im like a rabbit in the middle of the street and
you’re going 80mph and
my paws r 2 small to matter if i die again

I.
i stopped eating again; ridiculous, i know. i can see myself telling you this, i can see your reaction clear as day. i can

see your chest rise, see your eyes fall, i

remember the way your body moves after all this time. i know the curve of your lips. i know the dimples on your back. i

know what you’d say if you knew everything ive done since you left me. id swallow your silence with toast to keep my tummy from aching; id wrap myself up in your pity like gauze and reflect on my faults while you stare at me through the hair in your eyes that’s growing oh-so-fast because

i did exactly what you told me not to do the last time we talked. im comfortable with the fact that ill never be able to tell you ‘cause

i know you know, id recognize the feeling of your eyes on me anywhere. i think of you when it hits the back of my throat and i laugh when i gag ‘cause i know you would too.

II.
i check the clock and it’s 3:45; five minutes pass and it’s 6 in the morning. time isn’t concrete like a lot of things aren’t and now i snort when i laugh ‘cause i got used to the feeling, sharp inhale, drag forward slow, if you saw me like this you’d just laugh in my face and

i take a drag at 5:34. 40 minutes pass and it’s 5:46. time isn’t concrete like a lot of things aren’t and i wonder if you’ll remember my birthday this year ‘cause im turning 16, ill never catch up to your 17 years. if you saw me like this you’d remind me im stunting my growth .

i forgot her name but she probably remembers mine; after all i was her only friend. indiana heat, if you could call it that, sweltering sun in the summer makes the corn grow she said. chugging milk in our underwear on the street corner, i bleed and she bleeds with me like it’s voluntary but i know that she’s just gushing ‘cause we share the same veins and nerves and she punched the clot right out of my gut; i twitch, she twitches harder, conjoined physically and emotionally. i try to

signal at her from across the room, catch her gaze, try to communicate telepathically, i squeeze my eyes shut and pinch my fourth-grade brown bermuda shorts to my pig thighs and she turns to meet my eyes. i catch a glimmer in her face and she moves her hands in such a way that i know she’s understood me, i know she knows that i know that she knows that i

i know im changing ‘cause i haven’t felt like this in a long time, it’s been years since i couldn’t speak but only days since i’ve been vulnerable and i
hate it but ill
deal with it ‘cause
i gotta share a room with my brother now and
dad says he needs me, so he needs me, and

          i believe in words and body language, i
          believe in believing, i believe in love, i
          believe in things you wouldn’t even guess,
          because i used to be able to fly. i could

jump up real high and hover, lean my body in the direction i wanted to move and go there, float however long i wanted to, i swear it, but no one ever believes me. maybe i don’t believe me completely either but id like to believe that i can believe enough for it to be true because

          if i could fly back then, then that means
          my time spent on the ceiling
          was voluntary,
          and not some product of
          helplessness, avoidance,
          things are just so unfair and
          you’re so ******* stupid with your
          stupid ******* smirk and your
          stupid ******* ******* stupid
          laugh that makes my chest hurt cause
          your shoulders shake when you giggle
          and i think it’s so ******* beautiful and
          it really is so ******* beautiful and
          terrifying and
my dad asked me when we moved if i wanted his old mattress and i felt my insides twist and i
said no thank you with a smile but i,

i wouldn’t touch that nasty ******* bed if you ******* paid me to do it

i wasn't afraid the first time. i traded her kisses for hello kitty stickers and orange juice and
let her wipe my scrapes when i got hurt,

snot dribbling, innocent, when i was four my mother still
held the tissue to my nose while i blew,
i remember being impressed that she could put her own hair up.

i remember in the summer of '05 my grandma gushed about her on our birthday, she's gonna be five years old she said, she's gonna be a whole hand's worth of years she said, extending her

bruised fingers and shoving them in my face while i recoiled,
all five of them glimmering, waxy, iridescent like her
varicose veins in the june sunlight,

i wasn't afraid the last time either. i couldn't even feel it by then,
i folded back my eyelids to make her giggle and
let her put my hair up for me

(because my hands were only four years old and stubby,
i couldn't hold barrettes and big-girl cups
among other things)

stage one: autolysis
all i know is that it is cold in your basement. i can't tell because i cant feel anything but the space where you used to be and the fingernails lodged in my spine.
soft electric whirring and rigor mortis.
there is nothing you can do about this, you will not forget this.
you will cower from it.

stage two: bloat
recovery has long passed by now. there is a garden of loathing inside of you and it has overgrown / there is a ocean of fever inside of you and it has overflowed.
the body can grow to twice its size in this stage.
this is its way of releasing the pent up anger/sadness/longing you felt as a child.
your organs whisper "lets stop" and "im tired now" and (?).
they sigh as they expand. they are at peace now.

stage three: active decay
85% of brain growth occurs between ages 1-3. this doesn't mean anything as the years pass because when you are 4 you will liquefy and when you rot you will liquefy again.
(child deaths are always the saddest.)
you will find someone who loves you and you will return the favor; you will give everything to them and save none for yourself.
this is the riskiest gamble you will take / this is the only gamble you are forced to make.
you will let this swallow you. proceed with reckless abandon because
being cautious will hurt more than fingers on bare skin and flowers tucked behind small ears.

stage four: skeletonization
why has someone who has been hurt so badly choose to live so softly, to remain vulnerable? weathering can destroy you,
even the smallest wave can destroy the largest rock with time.
maybe she wants to be hurt, maybe she likes the cold basement, maybe she lets other people hurt her because she's too afraid to do it herself.
she seeps into the earth / i seep into the earth.
this is not the place where we died, but this is the place we will be forgotten.

stage five: funeral
lawn chairs / popsicles / fireworks. she stopped aging when she was small, she still pins baby hairs back with barrettes and cries for her mother.
she stares straight into the sun / she is an optimist.
she is soft, but do not handle her with care.
dig your nails into her torso,
**** her and cut her up into pieces and shove her in plastic bags / the lake where she swam as a child will be her permanent home.
she will fall in love with you chained to the bed, she
will love you endlessly and with every part of her,
every piece of her you tucked in her mothers garden.
i think it's time to
sleep.

i love you, and i am learning to love myself. please be patient with me. i am trying. i am trying. i am

i will carry this around until it kills me; ill let it teach me to be patient while she bares her teeth and snarls at me through the fog—thick and unnerving, sick and diseased in its attempted clandestinity. it stares at me with hollowed-out eyes and i suppress the pity filling my gut; i treat it like a newborn, like livestock, like slaughter. i admire the way its ribs protrude as it exhales; i compliment it on its drooping posture. it smiles up at me, teeth gleaming, heedless and giggling and soft in its membrane. it taunts me with love notes, stained carpet, a mess of pink plastic that presses me into the pavement and returns me to childhood; suddenly im ten and nothing is chasing me. i cover my body in bandaids; i wear my “tuesday” ****** on sunday and **** in my bedsheets.

i trickle where he
needs me and ooze where he
doesn’t want me, blistering

blistering like i always have on my fingertips,
swaying and tripping, pinching him when
he puts cigarettes out on himself—

relishing in the hypocrisy.
i feel his aura, resisting against me like magnets,
softening my skin like butter and

pleading with me to keep quiet,
he’d never admit that he’s scared but
he cries when the wind is too strong and

his shell walks beside me.
i cry when i'm scared
and i can't seem to reach him,

abrasive. abrasive, only in theory.
id let these fluorescent lights touch every inch of me.

i press my fingers into peony petals,
feeling their density,
cold, even in summer.

you talk like you mean everything you say.
you feel like the sun, you feel like
warm water in kiddie pools and

grass on bare feet, messy,
muddy, just like the color of your
eyes and

nostalgia tastes sweet but
its hard to wash off of your hands.
summer is just around the corner and

i feel it like ive felt it every year since i was nine.
i allow myself to say that this is more than just a scrape.
i allow myself to realize this hurts so much worse than

falling off my bike.
(gravel in my palms, my mother kissed my bleeding hands and smiled.
this is something she cant heal with neosporin and a kiss on the forehead; the only person who can help me is myself.)

i take baths in peroxide and still dont feel clean,
i wake up in the morning like ive just been reborn,
i think about how everything is so beautiful.

i lay under the peony bush. i let the falling petals baptize me.
i promise my mother that i'll be okay and
for once, i believe it.

when she speaks her voice oozes.
humid, sticky, heavy like
fog. i beg her to talk and it bleeds into me,
seeps into my pores. cocoons me in sludge.
i feel her yellow teeth sink into my skin and i feel my fingertips buzz,
i let her tear into me. i sigh into her canine teeth like
they’re the rim of my bathtub.

i feel her scraping the filth off me,
layers of sedimentation in
bacteria and saliva.
it collects under her blackened fingernails and
pools around the edges, soft,
revolting. she peels off my epidermis and my
blood rises to the surface, basks in her presence,
makes me dizzy in its hubris.

i feel all of her, i feel her teeth grazing my
small intestine and i muster a whimper.
aren’t quick deaths supposed to be painless?
like ripping off bandaids or
snipping umbilical cords.
i admire the holes she’s left in me,
tracing their edges, treasuring her bite marks,
realizing that this is all she’s left me with.

she gave me the privilege of a shallow grave,
sticky with topsoil and my own fermentation.
i become aware of my body, all my ridges,
open wounds, angry with infection,
******* liquefied tissue, cellular debris,
pus-filled and trembling.
i make friends with the maggots.

i press on my gashes and watch decomposition seep out of my pores,
i feel my new friends feeding off me, my skin hot with embarrassment from all the attention,
and i hold my breath just to feel the strain of my lungs.

they work their way up to my jaw, giving me soft kisses down to my dermis. i think of her one last time, and how she was too soft,
too soft and yet brittle and harsh and
alarming. i think of her body, all of her parts conjoined with
scarred lacerations and freckles.
i feel her eyes dart over what’s left of me. i feel her breath on my skin.

i ask the larvae if i taste sweet.
they assure me that im rancid.

in the summer her mother cries out her name,
as the harvest comes in.
rows of pure indiana corn,

swollen, pollen-filled and
waiting. festering.
in summer, she sits hungry and

wanting. like a sick dog she waits at her doorstep,
sweltering; silent; whining through molars
and drool.

she hears her mother call her name again and
through the spit she imagines
a billion corn-seeds

crying with her. she walks toward
the porch and sees her mama and
all her broken fingers.

she feels the pregnant stalks call after her;
they use her name and spit her mistakes back at her
like sunflower seeds.

she opens the screen door; her head aches,
she smells
of grain and pond-water and

baby powder.
she feels her arteries and
extends her elytra,

jerks her thorax toward the setting sun,
breaks all six legs on
impact.

her pollen-friends insist they're laughing with her,
they poke her limbs.
they watch her writhe.

"oh, isn't this beautiful? how gorgeous
you look with your
husk shucked off you."

she nods; silent. how flayed she is,
how vulnerable, how innocent,
like a pig led for slaughter.

i left her on the side of the road near the rookery in southern indiana. her body was still warm, not as warm as the time she told me she wished she had a thousand teeth but not yet as cold as the time she grew them all at once and stuck them in me. she taught me many things, like how to forget and how to see through the cataracts and necrosis. she kissed my face and told me i was beautiful and boiled me in a metal bin inside the barn and watched as my skin separated from my bones as easily as slicing butter. she assured me i looked prettier this way, all bones and flaying meat and a thousand little exposed teeth i had no idea were in me.

you walk your bike on the sidewalks and ride in the street
the asphalt calls to you. i'm not dumb,
and i know the skin grafts have gotten to you.
you scratch too much.
(are they bruises or just skin discoloration? are you hurting yourself or are you rotting from the inside out?)
this hurts more than it is supposed to (is it supposed to hurt at all?)
i can feel it in my stomach, i can feel it crawling down my spine and it rests on my hips
maybe this is my fault
i never grew up
and i walk like im delicate