Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the contents pour out like
spaghetti confetti.

Tommy, Elizabeth's boyfriend, rode his ocean blue Huffy, until the tread on his tires grew bald and until the grips were blanketed by dead skin. Looking for her, panoramic views of the horizon leapt beside him. Silhouettes of his legs, churned and kissed the orange and caramel dusk. With every tear in his hamstrings and calves, the **** in his sky grew and swallowed the memory of Elizabeth Mendenhall, Honor Student.

Margot, Elizabeth's twelve year-old sister, was an idealistic soul. Taking a Sharpie, she wrote on her sister's wall, "Liz, there is no death greater than the loss of self, and no life greater than one where we continuously search for what self is." Margot struggled with concentrating and frying eggs - but focused on the sunflower garden, dangerously and perfectly.

Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.

She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."

The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.

My brain is a factory,
producing every toxic part of me.
******* until my hand gets lazy,
fantasizing about Lexi Belle
and being Martin Scorsese.

My blood is a vacuum,
alone in a crowded room;
my white blood cells like to
travel to my *****,
so I can someday infect
designer uterine walls.

Locked and loaded,
my heart exploded.
The tissue and issues
attracted crocodiles
that swam from the mall,
for miles and miles.

Store-bought baby, my body isn't ready,
to be stripped down to the bone,
and sold to teenage radios,
that'll broadcast my American moans.

Caucasian nightmare:
my skin is not fair.
Peel enough off with chemicals,
until I decide there's no more,
and hide the layers in bathroom stalls,
located in the bleach of Baltimore.

I get weak
Thinking
About weeks.
For example:
1300 weeks = 1 generation;
2080 weeks = a work life;
4420 weeks = a lifetime.
Don't squander 1 week
Worrying about
Next week,
It makes one weak.

My mother held me,
and asked what was wrong with my world.
Her rubbery hands in my hair.
"I feel like a plastic narrative," I said,
"and there's nothing I can do about it."

O, ethereal Earth -
tortured town towering oneself.

Under Grace, thy swift death -
and upon mercy, a light, jest.

To be your Savior -
your only favorite -
is what's best.

(There are galaxies pinwheeling all around me and I can’t sleep.)

there is a malignance
festering within my bones.

night has hypnotized me numb.

it pulls Lake Michigan’s secrets in.

i stare at my cracked wrists.

there is mold in the crevices
of my mind.

i need stardust, to taste the burn of light.

the moon pulls blood from my heart,
shivers from my skin,
a sirens scream from my throat.

I wish I could decipher you
insufficient explanation construed
words may fail and logic falter,
the account I'd never alter

a beautiful culmination
purposed, intricate summation
as poetic as a psalter,
the account I'd never alter

transcendent, pleasant mystery
exquisite, written history
content, soaring past the vaulter
the account I'd never alter

I wish I could decipher you
the account I'd never alter

i am not your blooming flower
i don't belong in your
garden kingdom populated
by perennials and ruled by
thorn stemmed rose bushes
where you go
to seek solace and discover
the bursting lightness of
that sensuous pain when
blood erupts from that
thin line where
the white fatty layer threatens
to spill out into the world
and stain your white carnations.

and i never promised you
that it would be pretty
and that one day you would be
able to look at those sensationless slices
and see more than just
an act of scarification
that i asked for
that i endured
but the physical embodiment of
that internal scream that
bounces off the sides of my chest
and shatters the crystalline lattice
that protects my dispassionate heart
from your touch
as soft as the downy feathers
of the spring's children
emerging from their
incubator eggs to
greet the world where they
will fall before they fly
and i will impale myself on
the pyre of their sacrifice.