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.

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 .

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

something is turning, turning. it unfurls and bloats before me; unrecognizable, aside from the eyes. they were always the same. she looks healthier, i say. healthier half beat to death. i let myself grieve.

quiet, as always.
there’s never anything to
worry about, seriously.

(the dog inside me growls, thrashes and whips his chain, splits his maw on his confines.)


Anyway, it wasn’t that dark out yet. The moist, hot breeze licked at their shoulders as they walked home. They oozed in through the back door like smoke, sweating and cursing, I appeared in the living room like an apparition. The curtains were drawn. The TV was just static. It all happened in slow-motion—I see five skeleton fingers clutching cigarette butts, someone scuttles on the porch, the screaming door bursts open

And, yeah. That’s all I can really remember. Looking back, I feel like I should’ve remembered something like that, right? Yeah. That’s the type of thing someone remembers.

i.  its feeding off my body,
    the emotions turned to physical symptoms: i feel sadness like an
    ache in my stomach. i feel loneliness in my chest.
    my whole body is a callus.
          (how many bruises do you have?)
    im jealous cause i want you and it makes you want me more.
    i get high cause i love you and it makes me wanna puke.
                                                           ­                  i'll bite all your nails off.
    *******, just **** me already cause it makes you want me more
    and you need that security. its a give and
    take, mutual reconciliation,
    symbiosis.

ii.       i never fall for the body count, this **** means nothing to me.
          **** your blunt, that's my blunt now. i think i have control.
          
          so, *******, that's my blunt, that's my
          bad. you can do whatever you want to me; my pride isn't at
          stake, that's someone else's problem now. i have nothing so i
          have nothing to lose, we both know that i only came to
          smoke and you only invited me because
          i'm fresh meat. it's a give and take, supply and demand,
          symbiosis.

there was a short sweet wait before the worry.
why do i miss you when youre next to me?

i try to fight
you take me back:
warm plaster walls and obtrusive matter. a mirror made from bolts and metal sheets, the taste of ensure. bathroom wall etchings, comfortable silence and silence that isn't so safe. hiding your hurt in the hallway and bleeding it out after bedtime.

i deflate-
i combust.
why do you make me feel like this?
i try speaking to you, but im just pulling the string
on your back
that connects
to the voicebox,
you say sorry in the way you always do.
i memorized your automated response.
i'm thinking i can't do this anymore.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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 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)

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 relish in my ripeness, fertility dripping from in between my thighs, I’m this unchaste ****** Mary, I am. I’ve been touched by far too many and it’s obvious, obviously. He can smell it on me because it lingers forever, they say that dogs can sense the *** on you.

how unholy is this fornication, the irony of it all is so invigorating.
the hunger alone is enough to fill me, yet the act is carried out effectively:

he makes me *** like he’s reading verses:
the movements committed to memory.

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

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 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.

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.

your heartbeat quickens,
a rainstorm in my ear.
(what don't i know?)

a quick glance at the screen
the house talks
(why don't you respond?)

i'm next to you
i think about
the things i'd say,
the things i'll say.

it's cold outside
i hesitate.
does this even really matter if you
love me in the little ways?
i hesitate.

i know im not the only one.
i think you know i know.

it's only a matter of time
your mouse-paws pitter patter
when i leave the room

i spread like butter on the sidewalk.
sessile;
like the moss that took root in the cracks
in the pavement

i decide too late i want a little girl.
i'll name her vada jane,
and you can kiss her when im gone instead

metal screeches
drivers stop to
rubberneck.

they don't see me.
they see my vada jane.
she's kneeling over me-
she's beautiful, right?
she shines like oil on asphalt

im dull like blood on moss

(when i think of you
i can breathe
you are real)

2. She died a few days ago. I went to the funeral, saw all her terrible friends with all their moon sized pupils and cracked teeth. The body didn’t even look like her—I wouldn’t have known it was her if it wasn’t for the scars. They didn’t cover them.

Mosses persist, despite their size, because of their biological resilience. They are structured to survive in the most extreme climates, able to retain enough water to keep them alive even for years of drought. Even a 50-year-old dried moss can be revived with just a splash of water. She reminds me of moss. I kept thinking, if I could just sprinkle a little bit of coke in the casket her carcass would soften and shoot up like a tulip in spring.

This whole thing has made me realize that humans are not as resilient as I’ve come to believe. Things are different when you bleed. The last drought killed her. Once you dry out, you are dry forever.

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.

i am a liar and no one is spared,
not even my love. i twitch and convulse and i
pulse like a sore, kissing my bandage with tongue,
professing my worth without words.
you melt into me like youre partly at fault when you
know that my fault is my fault and not yours;
i bite like im tough.
you snap like you’re not.

i want that tall grass field,
i want that summer shine, the drone of the cicadas,
i want it all. i want that all for me.
i need to stop ending up in the hospital.

she said, the next time you try to leave i wont call the police.
she said, the next time you walk out on me i wont bother finding you.

he lost it. he lost it and she told him so, he said he felt responsible. maybe you are. maybe i am. but i ended up in the hospital again and

the little ******* my bus watched me sobbing on a stretcher from her window.

this one boy i know still lights his squares in his hand, still thinks two cigarettes in a day is too many, doesn't quite yet know the constant throat-burn borne from all that puking, but he still knows that

flying too close to the sun will melt you like chewing gum.

i want that tall grass itch,
i want that on my bare feet.

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.

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.

i am inside her skin, expanding to fill every fold and vein, everything stiff and taut and thick with pressure. i am her fingertips, her kneecaps, the back of her throat—and i can feel everything. like liquid i pool and congeal where the surface gives way—a hand is on the back of her head and suddenly her skull is a quarry after a long rain. her tongue meets something hard and becomes a root in damp soil, heavy and swollen and pregnant with water.

i want to feel how he touched you, exactly as you felt it. i want to know where you slept on this bed—i want to lay exactly where you laid. i want to watch every movement on his face in real time, study every twitch, follow his eyes everywhere. i want to hear every word he said to you—i need to hear it like it’s being said to me, i need to feel his breath in your ear. i want to know what the room smelled like. i want to feel your ***** rising.


a forearm, frantic and blind, reaching; submerged shoulder-deep in freezing wet, disembodied at the surface refraction. a fist finds the small of her waist at the bottom, latches on like a pitbull with lockjaw, so desperate and helpless, so violent—she is reeled in like a world record muskie. the pressure suffocates—the tension breaks and she bursts on impact, paper-thin dermis ruptured and insides spilling all over; virginal and spongy, even through the hardened rural water. there is nothing left but pieces, deflated: scraps of a water balloon on the pavement. a starving fisherman left with loss and waste, defeated by his own panicked desperation. he throws what’s left of the body overboard; lets it float dead and weightless, belly up, embarrassed.

a glance is a puddle of spit on the floor; whatever you did is a school bus-sized ditch slick and deep with black water.

her nausea becomes me.
i can’t even imagine you doing something like that.
i can’t even imagine why you would.

and, again, i am wide-eyed facing the wall.
again, i feel this same deep-belly despair, betrayal, gnawing and beating,
filet knife in between my ribs again,
and again i will feel this.
and this will not be the last time.
(you will protect me from the world but
i have to protect the world from you?)

-

the fish is gutted,
mealy flank flayed clean through and removed--
nothing soft or fleshy wasted.
the fish remains with her structure; bones fixed, exposed yet intact,
viscera still-trembling,
eyes alive and unmoving.
in the sink are two neat cuts of meat; one from each side, each about the length of a pocket bible.
the trash outside the shed is full of bluegill waste tossed whole,
bodies robbed of flesh and scale but still moist and twitching,
tiny mouths still quivering, gasping silently for something.

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

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.

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

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 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 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

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.

The sky was grey, and the clouds hung low and kissed the trees with tongue. This was smog-in-your-lungs weather. She took note of the ambiguity of the tree line. She paused-

              the soil became

              painfully aware of the

              drip, drip, drop

Has it always been so warm here? So vibrant? Is the scent of the flowers always accompanied by an ache in the stomach? The plant carcasses crunched beneath her feet, sighing as they turned to dust. As she walked the crunches got louder, louder, turned to whispers, turned to voices.

              the overwhelming whine

              will you deny it?

              the plants extend their leaves

She forgot her destination. The colors swarmed her senses, breathed hot air on her face. She is unable to ignore any longer.



              Hunger overcame the girl. A piece of fruit falls in her lap, everlasting.

poised to take this punch in the gut, i stand like a statue,
weathered and wasting before you.
what is left will remain hard until i am nothing.
i am ashamed at the
stability of your flesh,
your unsure steps mean nothing when
your tongue is all steel and
my core is all worthless and i
feel nothing from you and
this infuriates me.

the blood rushes to your head and yet your
eyes stay cold?

2. his lips are all softened strips of flesh like mine,
lacerations in the callus.
the contrast is hard to ignore.
i stand before him like i'm made of sand:
he has your smile.
his eyes wash over me;
i crumble.

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!”

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.

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.

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.

again, this vessel bursts and turns to bite me like a dog.
an open palm connects with the doughy skin on my temple;
repeat the action til it satisfies.
i pray for my skull to give way at the soft parts,
implode at the seams. it smiles in my mind's eye,
tickles my nerves from the inside.

i'll still feel the buzzing inside me, the boil-bubble-brew of this rage,
i wish i could tell you. i wish i could tell you.

this is a poem about my violence and all the glittering ways i self destruct.

you make me nauseous now
and your mouth tastes like fever.
you look me up and down—
you almost tell me i look skinny but you catch yourself.
you just say that i look good and lay down on my bed, waiting.

i don’t miss you anymore. i don’t want anything from anyone, for the first time in a decade.

all i need to know is that i can still be in control sometimes.

she says it’s obvious—that my whole body shakes and my eyes glow like moons. she says she can tell as soon as i sniffle. she asks me how long it’s been and i lie.

i convince myself i can be in control. i convince everyone else too.

the room is warm, so warm it chokes me. the walls are draped with rugs and greyed with dust; the lamp-light struggles to reach my eyes through the smoke. cecilia wields her blade and runs her tongue along the edge. she has to taste it, she says. to make sure it's right. her yellowed teeth meet the hilt and she leans in my direction; the point of her weapon reaches my temple, caresses the skin there, leaves a drop of her spittle on my cheek from the pressure. she looks up at me--i hate her expression. i hate the sag of her skin; the way she looks at me; her cloudy, flitting corneas; dead and sightless. she's wearing my shirt. it drapes her frame. she looks terrible. i swallow my disgust and stare hard, i close the space between us. she kisses her blade, one last time, for good luck. love is oppressive. cecilia carves me a new pair of eyes.

in the morning my back aches,
the sun rises with you everyday.
this obsession like cheap alcohol in cans
we throw up when it's too much.

i know your hands will be the ones to **** me.
not used to being loved more than you're loving
you fumble every clasp and button.

i long for nausea in tongues and on couches,
the sick feeling of love in my gut,
drifting off to the hum of your engine.

you’re ******* with me. mom always said your eyes go black when you’re angry and i see it now, too clear, i’m Crying. i’m Terrible, right? like a boil i fester underneath the kitchen table. you can not touch me, you can not touch me, donttrytotouchme cause i haunt this place. i haunt this home and all the other ones i died in; i pull your teeth and make things go bump in the night

so here i am because ghosts cant leave the place they died. my blood is in the other bed ******* in snot. my hands smell like ****. i know your skeletons very well. we dance and bleed together when you walk down the stairs, when you give us that look, we cry when your voice hits the window, my little finger pushes all the bite behind me. we wail in unison.

i imagine breaking each other's noses. i imagine the bone-crunch, cartilage on cartilage like a car crash, the feeling of the skin giving way. i imagine a nosebleed so thick, so clotted and deep-red, oxidizing in real time, warm milk on my face. i imagine a day without nausea. marked by stomach acid, snot pooling above my lip, the face in the mirror gagging into the sink. i draw anything and hate it. i go for rides and just get tired. i try to write and i feel nothing.

bits and pieces of the last few years manifest themselves in dreams: the feeling of handcuffs and hard car seats like playground swings; a six-by-six room with words etched into the wall; being sandwiched between linoleum and fluorescent beams. i revisit myself; she never cried, just dug her nails into the palms of her hands and bore the weight, i admire her stoicism. i admire the way she held her shoulders.

it's 2017 again. i clean blood off the walls in suburbia while a kitchen knife exposes a trachea somewhere in west virginia; i should've known back then that i was cursed. she skyped me with blood dripping down from her chin to her chest. i wonder if the scar's still there.

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 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.

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.)

everything looks prettier fragmented. i have pieces of you lodged in my ribcage, my lower back, the bottoms of my feet. all catching the light as i move. (i imagine myself in the back seat of someone’s car. i cant hear the music over the static.

it marvels at my lucidity. maybe i am more blind than i thought, i think too late.) i know exactly how your heart beats. i know exactly how you breathe and all your dips and hills and plains, and i think maybe i know you too well. (it watches me destroy my body.

it nods in silence. i imagine myself in the passengers seat of someones car.) i puke and pretend that you’re holding my hair back.

Thank you for your patience,
carelessness imitating restraint.

He mutters something.
Words stumble through the air,
delay at my earlobe,
they dare not climb inside.
I won't ask again.

(Heartache is ghosts in the walls. Heartache is socks-on-at-all-times 'cause the carpet is gummed up with **** and little empty baggies stick themselves to the soles of my feet as I walk. Heartache is a few days here and there without power, a bowlful of dead fish left to stew. Heartache is bath times in mold, never being clean, when you'd rather let the pillow suffocate you rather than taking it off your ears and hearing the screams--you say you know pain, how could you know? How could you even begin to understand?)


I say thank you for putting up with me
regardless. You know I keep it all inside--
I know why you stir in your sleep.
If I were you, the guilt would eat me too.

For the sun always sets in front of me,
and rises from the back--

(Have I convinced only myself that you don't want me? Have I convinced you too?)