i am my own fiona apple record;
choking on my exoskeleton and
bleeding into the lake. it makes pretty
whips with red and blue interlaced more loosely
than my emotional stability, and the religious faith
that succumbs to the chrome pattern cracks on my wall.
it's after midnight and i can smell the cotton clogging my
esophageal lining, secreting on my taste buds. my retinas are wired at
the lead in the corner while centipedes crawl beneath the muscles
of my kneecaps. it's only two a.m. i pretend i am a neon zebra,
reflecting light onto all my insecurities because the coffee mug
never felt so cold against my shoulder. i wonder if i am
insane. Morning time. Sunrise.
The ray of Light refracts onto the window, bolstering the
cotton breathing within me like a parasite.
i am an enemy of my Being.

But tonight passes.
Seldom passes.
Today, I am
SanE.

my heart is a gasoline guzzler
running on the fumes of burned out
memories, thoughts, and breaths.
my veins play jump rope with my bursting capillaries
and beneath the seam of every heartbeat
is an arrhythmia that smiles back.
no longer is every intake an oxygen a dutiful task.
rather i, as a sovereign animal
convert the anguish into carbon dioxide
because i don't care for the proton pumps
or the electron chains. i am negatively charged
and hidden inside this bubble is a dark cycle
beseeching for the spotlight.

our bodies are melting jellyfish,
stinging beneath the ocean's surface
for a chance at reincarnation.

racked across her burning shoulders
i was the pig but on a flaming spire
so close to the ethereal cotton.
i was suffocating
and only a snap of the neck or a crack of the joints
provided a release of oxygen that set us aflame.
we don't belong here and the belittling braces
our salivating frontal lobes. it's still too dry,
and from this moment on, how could this moment bring
more tears than my own death? i float atop the spire once more
to lay, to decay, and to fade faster than the last words
you spoke to me.

None of clothes are right and so I am not human. Only cold winds and crazed neon. I sometimes shine a flashlight under my fingers to remind myself of my bones. But they're as breathlike and photonic as the plastic tears I will never be given the right to have.

We know that **** ain't real.

How brittle a (we) can be. What sound is my voice allowed to have other than the violent dance of glass on concrete? My happiness always hangs from the end of a baseball bat.

And that's the way things are.

Of course, my mantras are just idolatry or faggotry. Systems of oppressive heat and chemical equations either pat me on the back or slap me across the face and I can never quite seem to catch my breath or feel an embrace, not really.

My forehead burned, but I closed my eyes.

How heavy must my skin and eyelashes and all the things that encase me, engender me, hang about me before I can finally count myself beloved? The question is as impossible as my own humanity, and my existence is not so self-evident that kiwis taste like queer fruits. So until smiles lose their tartness and I can breathe at last, *******.

remember when the parabolas were to steep

and the martyr flew out of the sky to save us
all?

exposure to the curves bent us, but we stood still.

icy syncopation in our eardrums and no one could stop
our cadence.

we were cold and chilly, and our bodies began to flush out the

heat, but we stood firm. the wind whipped our eyelids,

and the river crashed into the trees.

our own metamorphosis was one of tyrannical thoughts

but purity lied between our veins. i stared at my hands for hours,

webbed and amphibian-like. we weren't ourselves

and after the fifth of March we fell into the vespertine.

transformation complete.
androgyny in its fullest form.

every strand of your hair is another level of
complication. the tangles are lathered with a devotion
that has bent me broken.
my story is one of splintered wood
and nails made of toxic metals.
an ocean of surprise swept over me,
and the splashes didn't hurt me this time.

ice-cold fingernails keep calm when the moon
is up; there is an effervescence underneath my covers,
and tonight i will love myself.