It wails like an infant. the silence completely deafens me, the noise makes my head ache. the Thing crawls down my spine, ever so softly and i shiver from the tenderness. the promiscuity, undisguised. i remember where i am and my eyes focus on your figure. i pinch myself, i cross my eyes, i distort you. i imagine that you are a terrible thing.

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.

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.

imagine:
the dogs are barking again.
the years have not yet caught up with me and
my hands are still supple, uncallused.
my mother holds them
in her working palms, cups my fists with nearly
20 years of withdrawals etched on the knuckles.
my father dwells on the couch like an animal;
his nose bleeds in his sleep. the afternoon sun wanes;
soon, he will rise, nocturnal in all his glory,
the nail of his pinky finger long and battered,
scratching the air for his next fix.

these hands don't gush from love--i was an angry child.
when the sun shone i screamed and i flew through the
tall grass; indiana was still a prairie back then.
i cut the worms up.
i watched them writhe.
they wriggled, brainless, back into the earth,
the remaining tail end helpless in my sweating palm.

when i was 4 they put houses where the fields were.
i was never the same after that.

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.

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.

you are collateral damage.

you look down at your hands, they are callused and bleeding in all the places your teeth broke the skin so many times, this is,

is this some small victory? is this war necessary? the sound breaks through the silence but it is still muffled. the bathroom door is closed. there are people on the sink, in the bathtub, you are puking and have no idea who is holding your hair back. you feel fingers shove their way into your throat. you bite down,

your hands are bleeding again. you don't know your limit, you fall in love again, it all just aches in your chest. you were pretending the whole time, oh my god, you were pretending the whole time. you are staring at your hands.

this death is inevitable and the artillery smiles at you with all the love of a new mother like the friendly fire is so friendly and these casualties are so casual. you are fighting a war with yourself. you are fighting a war with your body and you are fighting a war with whoevers *******
fingers
are in your
throat

and the body count is rising. the air teases your lungs.

i have your mind, i have it squishy and malleable in my small hands, i have your heart and all that other **** that fills you too. i have you and you know it. i have you and it keeps you up at night, it keeps you texting me and it keeps you in my palm, wrapped around my little finger til the circulation’s cut.

i like it ****** but i always seem to **** the wrong way. your clothes are on my floor but i ****** it the wrong way. you gave my **** back cause i ****** you the wrong way, i wanna **** this up the right way. i do this for a living, i’m living as an actress; i ***** better than i lie and i lie better than i breathe.

i pay the price for this stale air, and savor the quiet: this humidity sticks to my shirt, coats the skin in my nose. i go over it in my head like i will say it, but i don’t, and i
still get a rise out of you. i can just hear your heartbeat over the air conditioning and lil *** vert and the ear damage. i am notorious for making homes out of nothing; a closet, a hospital cot, the floor of your bedroom. i shall only grow to fit my space and yet i realize too late that this is no home for me sober. ill get drunk and eat these ******* moths, i'll [CENSORED] and i won’t even see them.

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.

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 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 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 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 can’t breathe
the carpet stops swaying, sea legs suffocating
what does it feel like?
i feel my pupils return to normal.
i scratch the ever constant itch
she sits back on the ***** of her feet

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

there is something disgusting stuck in my throat.
the dogs are barking. i gnaw on the joints of my hands to the
beat of their dissonance; this is what got me sick in the first place.
me and my butterfly wings,
my butterfly knife and my
butterfly rash.
winter is always diseased.
i just want to be left alone yet i swell and secede,
i urge and i can't keep ignoring,
this death will be the death of me.
i hate me

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 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 .

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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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.

there is no reason for anyone in the world to like poetry

there is something i must say before i can say anything else--
i have lost touch.
i have lost touch with myself. words fall dead from my lips,
dry rotted, caked in filth,
the conversation ended years ago.
it is too late to talk now.

i see a body. i see a body sparkling by the light of the tv, feet planted firmly on the carpet. i see it sticking to the couch, the boundaries between skin and upholstery merging, the face morphing, becoming unrecognizable. i see a brown carpet, spilled milk from 2018 that never got cleaned. a sully figurine on the shelf looks down at me. i see a hand, lifeless, ***** fingernails itching.
a light turns on upstairs.

i see a mother crying. i feel a father's guilt like a pill stuck in my throat.

i see the body now, again, sparkling under fluorescence on a metal table. a pair of white lips, the snaggletooth he always hated. i see them scraping dirt with their scalpels, cleaning puke with bleach and peroxide. i want to weep but i can’t blame them. it’s human nature to be rough with things that cannot feel.

there is nothing to be said anymore. he is never truly gone, he is in everything. he's in your ****** soundcloud playlists, in the mini ziploc baggies you never threw away from freshman year. he's in the mulch at beech park, the oil stains in parking lots, the writing on your shoes. you can still talk to him whenever. he won't respond, but he never said much of anything anyway. not when you wanted him to. so it's really not that different, is it? will it ever really be that different?

let me say this again--
i have lost touch.
i am craving an unattainable high, i am chasing it with everything left in me. if i thought poetry would get me any closer, i would write more.

i see a body, again, but for real this time. i see it lying in front of me, unrecognizable. i see this sadistic tradition for what it is, animated corpses parading around an excuse for them to cry and rage at anything else but themselves. i tremble like a leaf, i leave the voyeurs where they stand and i sit in the back.

your funeral is at the same church we went in to fill our **** in 2018. they're ******* playing "you raise me up" by josh groban. a woman i don’t know tells me i’m too pretty to cry, and probably thinks she’s a saint for doing so.

i see you sitting next to me, you're not a body anymore. you're holding my hand and laughing, laughing, laughing at it all.

and after all this time
here i am wasting time again.
it's easier this way, me and my blistered fingertips,
squirming in the way that i do that you know when the
comfort's too much. the water's stagnant and the bugs will be out with
humidity. it bites the calluses--there's too much
scar tissue to feel it.

the feeling crawls in; house spider unnoticed. it has legs with claws and tiny hairs that scrape my skin; i take note of the brain-tingle, the alarm bells. i try to shake the feeling that

hiding something? no, this is supposed to be good. what don't i know? its a low pitched rumble this time, it started in the back of my head and my knees and not the top of my head like when love goes wrong or my toes when the blow is coming from the back. the spider tells me something's wrong. its voice is too soft to hear.

i ignore the gut-rumble and indulge my fight or flight. i can't shake the feeling but i try. i can never shake the feeling but
maybe i can
dislodge it
if i just-
one more second-

my poor spider's fangs probe my shoulder;
huh. i thought her mouth was too small to hurt me.
she's close enough now to hear her whispers;
i become the venom.

i ignore my sixth sense until im hanging on her noose.

the scars resurface like bodies in the dirt after rain, orifices caked in sludge. the blood pools under the surface, nearly bursting. the expression makes it ******, i'm confused again. i cannot write anymore. i cannot think in sentences. i think in fragments and memories and thoughts of her sleeping with her jeans on. i speak through the crack in the closet door. i know she would've found it funny if i stayed, i think of his sandpaper hands and a stained duvet, i am 16 again with no one to hold me. i am 17 and this has never felt so right. i lust after senses, i miss cleanliness and remembering, i remember who i was when i was 15 and realize i cant remember much of anything since then. i imagine a situation where i never lost my love and kept my appetite, a situation where the drug abuse never stunted my cognitive functions, everything is so clear until it suddenly isn't, the last coherent thought i ever had i was 14 and the whole world was against me. i cant make **** sound poetic anymore. i feel like im 14 again and she sleeps with her jeans on

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.

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 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 snow leaves us speechless and comatose. you shudder.
i have always been obsessed with the movements of you, i sigh when you twist and you
****. the smell is ******. i
can’t feel my legs? i can’t feel my
can’t feel my
jaw or the
top of my nose or my
spine, i bleed inward, and i   i   i
i am TERRIFIED OF MY OWN BODY.
you swear that this silence is toxic.you
can’t get a word out of me i’ve been choking.im never fine but i believe it

im twisting through this harshness in all my bare-brained glory. ill come to terms with this before i burn this bridge and that i’ll live by; i’m throbbing on this curb,
i know i’m dying on this hill;

i am blessed in my heart and my soul and your
ridges in all their perfection. i’ve become obsessed with your pliability, can you twist your hips like that for me again? i want to attract the doves, your god can’t wait to absorb all my sorrow, and



my eyes give me away.

i swear i have

knives on my

waist and they’ll

cut if you

touch,

the solidity scares you,

why don’t you intimidate me?

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.

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.

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 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 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)

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

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.

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.

the air is never truly fresh anywhere
it gets harder to breathe by the day
and my chest still hurts, but i can ignore it a little better now,
and i think i might be starving but i can’t really tell anymore.
(i go to the gas station i always do to ****. i get an apple and some cranberry juice, just in case—i check nutrition facts and choke it down, convince myself this is enough nourishment to keep me conscious. i know all the workers here—i wonder what they think of me and i can’t get it out of my head. i fight the lightheadedness and eventually it fades; i’m used to looking through a lens with black around the edges. i make it home before daylight tonight, somehow. this is peace, i tell myself—true peace means succumbing. when i get home, i throw it all up.)

I’ve been forced to learn to be comfortable placing my life in hands other than mine.
The truth is that I’m not clean, and never really have been since the beginning. In whatever capacity that may mean. I’ve always been chasing.
It is over when it’s over.
There is something about this that lingers.

(the sirens came before the storm. the air was blistering and the sky was clear as swimming pools but you knew it was coming, you know it when the leaves turn their back on the sky, when you can feel it thick and hot on your face.)

18
this moon, everything bloomed. the forests got so dense they obscured paths and openings, sprouted lungs and limbs, grew a head of hair so full that rainfall never kissed the dirt. this blessed season, a saint returned to me—i was high for months and months. i awoke each day like i hadn’t seen sunlight in years, clawing at  window sills and locks on doorknobs; arching toward sunlight like a dandelion sprout. this was when i became part of it—grew roots deeper than the tallest tree and spread my seed as far as it would reach. and i was cool—i was so, so cool. you could smell it coming off me like a fever.
(the saplings i fostered bear fruit now; fruit that’s all pit and rind and meal and rots before it falls from the tree.)
(are you scared of me now? that’s all i’ve ever wanted.)

Was it me all along?

explore the possibility of a grey area.
whatever’s inside you lives in everyone.
sometimes there’s no one to blame and sometimes there’s no one that’s innocent.
stop seeking repentance—you’re far past punishment. there are no lessons left to be learned.
you need to grow now.
you need to move now.
forgiveness can be enough, but you need to start with yourself.
you’re not enslaved to this cycle; you’re married to it. it will never love you back.
this will be all consuming. i don’t feel bad for you anymore.


I don’t think any of us deserve this.
I love you all but I hate you so much.

19
dissatisfaction creeps in
ugly ******* staircases
crawling
nothing glows like it used to.

i cried and begged for rain to come. i slept on rugs and covered mirrors with silk sheets. the most evil thing to be is to be pretty.

this was the hit you take after the first time—the second dull head rush, watered down. getting familiar with sickness. realizing you will chase this forever.

…
this month it will be a year since you died. i barely have anything left of you—a couple messages on a long abandoned instagram account, a conversation on my old flip phone, a polaroid, a few grainy videos so old i barely remember the stories behind them. i’ve searched for every shred of you i can find—i hoard memories of you like a dragon guarding its wealth. i have a video of us laughing in my basement that i’ll never show anyone. i want the moment all to myself.

your death ushered in a change deep in my core—something far greater than personal growth or character development. a pillar of my very being broke down; a rudimentary aspect of my character shifted. im afraid it changed me in all the wrong ways. nothing scares me more than disappointing you. ive spent a whole year doing nothing to make you proud. ill never stop being sorry, and id give anything to tell you that.

the road bends and curves. our skin is dewy and hot and we fog up the windows, your breath is humid on my chest. my head throbs, the tips of our pointer fingers just barely connecting out of sight, my stomach churns, i forget to sleep for a day. 2 days. 3. i try to force myself to eat and i get sick. you make me think of damp leaves, cotton and rubber, as persistent as a hangnail and as urgent as a hole through my chest. you ask me where is the logic in this, i make excuses for myself again. i think you can tell how bad it is. this itch will never let you love me, no matter how i scratch it.

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. it’s a sad morning, but only i know it. he wakes me with such tenderness, with a graze of fingers across my waist. i realize he thinks im sleeping and i wonder if he was awake all night too. the bodies in this place are still. i rouse myself from the couch and look at the people passed out on the other side of it, on the floor, in the kitchen. i try to remember what their names were and i can’t. i think of how i want to take a picture, the whispers of 5am light peeking through the blinds. i don’t take a picture. this home is unfamiliar.

i struggle to open the door. the girl with red hair lifts her head from the coffee table, “where are you going?” her hair is stuck to her face, sweat matting the burnt ends from too much bleach. i have to go to school and for a moment this embarrasses me, i don’t belong here with my 15 years. i don’t remember what i told her but it wasn’t the truth, and from behind the curtain of hair i hear, “make sure you be quiet going down the stairs.” my new love and i look for the cigarettes and realize we smoked them all last night. we leave this apartment for what will be the first of many times. i trudge down the stairs with the force of an earthquake.


ii. i wake, again, with my head on the floor. i’m facing someone’s bare back. i watch the muscles ripple through the exhales, i reach my hand out to touch him. he twitches before my fingers reach his shoulder and i recoil: this will be another sad morning. my sweat sticks my shirt to my skin. i throw off the blanket. two years later and my headache reminds me of my nicotine habit. i climb up to the bed, i avoid the boy as best i can and i sit there and sob. i have 17 years on my back and i know i belong here. i belong where i put myself. i bleed under the morning light and nobody notices—every house is unfamiliar to me now. the parallels jar me. i don’t have to go to school this time.

i. it's a sad morning, but only i feel it. he wakes me up with *****. it's 5am again but still too dark outside to see so i take in the scent of his sick; i notice myself being pulled closer. i realize he thinks im sleeping and hope he lets me stay--he doesn't, but it's not his fault. it never is. he drags me out by the knobs on my feet; i dig my nails in the carpet, puke pooling under the fingers, the fibers rip the nails right off me--he starts to cry. i wonder why he's crying. he drives me home in silence, leaves me spitting in the snow, crashes the car on the way home. i'm through two pots of coffee already by the time he decides to love me in the morning.

ii. i wake, again, with my head on the floor; but this time it's my own. this 5am is dark as well, save for the light of my phone on the wall--it's ringing, the buzzing sticks knives in my head. i pick up and see his pale green eyes, deadpan and silent; i hear him crying in my head nonetheless. he asked me if he woke me up and i lie; i'm just thinking about the muscles on his back, the worry-lines, and our nicotine habit. he is unrecognizable now, but it's my fault--he looks so different under street lamps at 3am, so much softer when my vision is clouded by amphetamines. i find solace in the fact that, after all this time, he might be too late.

"we would've been forever," he said. "you and i would've been forever." i realize his eyes aren't even ******* green anymore. i thought you weren't afraid of anything? "i know," i say, and i hang up the phone for the last time.

i can see it
feel it, even
if i pinch it, pull it back,
roll it between my fingers.
and all of this is entirely your fault.
and nothing can be salvaged.

(i knew what i was doing when i did it--before i even knew it i was aged and fleshless. it hurts my stomach but i want more. i'm not scared anymore, and that scares me.)

to be espoused for years to your loss
referring to yourself as anything else feels like betrayal.
like fruit rot turned mold green,
displaying decay in real time
(a divorce is out of the question at this point. there is no such thing as a loveless marriage--there is love in pain. there is comfort in this hurt.)

a plant is only a plant when it sprouts
(if it even does, ever. do you get it?)

a worm finds its way into my apple.
i will never, ever trust anyone again.

7pm:
january evenings are cold.
we know this place and all its weaknesses well;
we've spent summers spitting and nodding in the park bathrooms when
our parents yelled far too much and
sitting inside all day proved to be too much stimulation.
it's winter now; the third since my rebirth, in fact,
the bathrooms are locked
and our parents fall silent when we enter the room.
yet we are still persistent, perhaps more desperate, jaded yet still children,
so the strongest foot out of all of ours
connects with the space directly under the lock and handle
with a grunt and
the door thumps open without too much resistance.
like i said, we know this place's weaknesses well,
and staying in the house is no longer an option.
(however, we are still children in the end. i'm the only one who remembered to hide my face from the cameras.)

somehow these walls look smaller with the pictures taken down,
i havent felt myself in weeks.
i havent felt this way since
my foot-soles kissed 230 on the comeup,
since 120 burned a hole in my nose and made me choke on the pellets.
i miss addiction in the purest way.
i miss your bed but not your mouth,
i miss your hands but only on my hips and nowhere else.