Scooped out
Pumpkin guts
Spilled onto my
Newspaper-covered
Kitchen table
Spoon-scraped
Prepared to be cut
Two triangle eyes
For me, please
A mouth with missing teeth
A candle light
At my center
To shine through,
Illuminate the hollow

I was wondering when
I would eat my own words
Now I need to count the carbs
In each syllable

Calculate just how much
Life juice to inject
Into my bruised abdomen
After milking the drops
From my tingling finger

I ask of you to see
And watch and listen to me
Because I am not a result
Of sucrose-inclined molars
Or an unlucky inheritance
I am all of my own

So when my jaw grew thin
I praised myself and thought how
I shed some "extra" fat
I thought perhaps
Maybe I had a tape worm
Or a hollow leg
That hid over 2500 calories
In a single day that still didn't feel
Like enough
With 126 oz of water
I was leaking every twenty minutes
I praised myself, but
I didnt feel like myself

I knew before I knew
Had that deep gut feel
Before it was real
It was so undeniably mine
Like a limb I forgot I had

But it was like that limb previously
Slapped me in the face,
Stole my fortune,
Ran off with my fiancé,
Then said I was bound for great things
As it slipped out the back

I was shredded into nothing
But handed something of promise

You've not been feeling yourself
A dull kind of ache
A colorless vision

Feels too small to mention
Yet larger than comfortable
I see you inside

I sat in a field, once
Off topic, but it connects
I was thirteen and was offered
A fruit punch with Burnetts
I said no, but watched
As she did and spun around
In that field with that drink
And a sky full of stars

I felt small
In a snowglobe
The stars were just pieces
Of flakes ready to fall
I stared hard at them
And for the first time I saw
Their true light
Never constant
Brighter
Duller
Brighter

And as I reflect
I know that this much is true
Just as the stars are
Even people flicker too

It's not that this space
Aches in your lack
It's that it feels fuller
When you come back

It clouds the way I see your face
Transports me to another place
Makes me dissect a warm embrace
Oh how I wish it wouldn't

I hate to hurt, from past and you
It's trained in me, nothing to do
With how we are, I see it through
You're wonderful, I have no clue

As if you whipped my heart to shape
Looked over like a wilted drape
I trained my heart to feel like crepe
Clutched like Ann Darrow by the ape

It is my way I have found
It lifts my feet from solid ground
Like a circus mirror it confounds
Leaves me foolish in it like a clown

I don't expect you to see
The way its wicked works on me
It's hard some days, but I will always be
Much more than my anxiety

November
Crisp weather
Together
Again

Our sweaters
Blue and maroon
Were you nervious?
I was too.

Fingers inched
Memoried pinched
Heart strings tugged
Surely cinched

There we were
Together again
More than just
Two old friends

Tree limbs bare
Crunching brush
New old growth
Made me blush

My biggest fear
Is that you'd forget me here
Move along with my body
Leave my heart unseen

Intertwine your life
With who you think I am
Form sentences from my words
In the order you ordain

Be quick to assist
To the whim of a stranger
In the early morning hours
But forget I am broken

Do you ever look at my hands
Visually caress the curvature of my face
Trace the light with your eyes
And contemplate my being?