clouded by home,
you troubled people
ask and destroy lives
to remake despair.

the power put in his hands
silenced her into that
familiar trap.

“i should have let her go.”

but he began attempting the
impossible, so used to looking
at the Gorgon, afraid to face
the sacrifice tightening
under his head.

“tomorrow?”

“dearest—!”

she flooded his heart with
goodbye.

pompeii runs through our veins,
hot with the taste of ash & decay.

some of us are fortunate enough to
become ruins; others are ruinous,
sepulchers of epidemics, air-born, contagious.
a disease that could make London a cemetery.

we dress ourselves up like relics, clothed
in silk and gold and gossamer,
as if they could one day be armor.
as if they could bring us safety.
as if we deserve such things when everything we touch rusts.

it takes only twenty-two years for the
average person to realize they are a weapon.
that words are knives and actions are razor blades,
as if to remind the living that we
came into the world screaming—
and we have never been silent since.

we are the Morrigans, the cursed women,
those whose destiny is entwined with death.
we court death, invite her to our dinner table every night,
let her sleep in the guest room, leave the doors and
windows unlocked for her.

death, we realize as women forced to bear
the weight of the dead on our shoulders,
never comes as a thief.
she comes as a lover, smelling of lilac, a grin
too white and too large to be human.

still, we invite her in,
because even death, regardless of form,
makes for better company than the empty dark.

i. there’s a girl. narrow-*****, wild hair like a lion’s mane, sprawled underneath the shade of a looming fig tree. her teeth are all that’s sharp about her. soft curves, soft lips, a soft paradox in the Garden. in this lost land, there she is, subtle and tinged with the same stardust you once believed could save us all.

angelic, you’d call her, if she looked more grotesque. more like the cherubim of ol’, dressed in flames, impaled on swords, screeching the name “hosanna, hosanna” without mouths. but there are no wings, no heavenly trumpets, just the afterimage of divinity– something laced with hope, but already rotting. she spits out seven seeds and you don’t know if this is a land of God or gods anymore.

ii. she smiles and it feels like death.

you are unable to solve the riddle sprung from the lion’s ribcage– but the roof of your mouth tastes like honey and blood and you don’t mind. there’s no linearity, no familiar whine of a donkey, nor the sound of sand against gravel or sandaled feet marred by sunburns and blisters.

there is simply you and her and an eternity of possibilities that whisper in a forked tongue, “adam, oh adam,” and your heart drops. is this the end? but it tastes so sweet and you are alright to die like this, cradled between what was once in your womb and a creature of scales.

you do not expect the guilt that drips down your chin with each rivulet of juice.

iii. they call it love.
you call it divine absolution.
she calls it the beginning of humanity.

distant ships sailing through the
pink crests of brain matter  
brimming with cargo; the unit
of knowledge burrowed in flesh
unable to feel pain, passing the
sensation on skulled flags—beware,
remember, know that these things
can haunt you.

(know that these things may one
day heal you)

this is who you are now: yellow,
sunflowers wreathed in knotted strands
of wheat-colored hair, pill bottles
half-full, hands like rotting fly traps
curled in supplication on a
Thursday morning when the pain is
too much to bear alone.

this is who you will always be: a series
of binary sparks, a long silvery tunnel,
streetcars laden with passengers
weaned on anger & fear & love--
a construction site.

you are a work in progress.

If I am to drown,
I hope to march headfirst
into the sea, disappearing
under the waves in a lure of
golden fish scales,
crushed to the bottom
by bullet-shaped weights.

I want a death by mystery,
to wash ashore one April morning,
bloated & violet, fingernails stained
with yellow seaweed.

I was once rainwater clutched in
the milk-white teeth of a crashing wave,
black storm clouds crackling with
lightning bolts of who I was and
who I could never be.

I wake with seawater in my mouth,
a cruel simulacrum of
living water, staining my lips & neck
in the color of overripe plums.

I am water immobile,
molecules frozen in crystalline figures,
waiting for the warmth of choice, of
knowing that my fate can be more than
dead at twenty-seven to thaw my
aching limbs.

once upon a time,
i collapsed, maw split
open like a peach,
sowing seeds of doubt
in the darkness of space.

the innocence of youth,
however brief,
remains
sheltered in
the deep sulci of the
brain;
hidden,
almost forgotten,
like vestigial organs that
mark
a species’ ancestry,
as if to say:
this is who i am,
who i was.