cuticles strewn into dismemberment
pulling myself away: picking, peeling
learning to breathe dusty air

i’m never there, you’re never here
tangled pathways in the color of scar

can you hear broken breath,
can you see fractured light,
can you taste salted tears
all before they slip by, unnoticed?

morning has never been a friend
always revealing dreams as nothing more than
silver screen annotations to the life we lead
vs the life we need -
i need to give up wanting
so i rid myself of this lump that rests in my chest
when i try to speak when things are amiss
and tangled becomes knotted.

fingers dismembered gardens -
poppy leaf, red raw
a wallet of unrecalled, trifold and unstable
wanting, wanting, wanting
to fidget into the arms of understand
me

Primrose babies chewing womb
born in the window, summer room -
the snakes are in the garden &
dig up the mothers,
dirt fingers wringing necks!
                 suffocate,
                 suffocate
                        swallow.

Brittle petals aflame
death calls out a name,
shrieking -
                siren calls over airwaves
                shortened breath &
                  the mothers are in the gardens.

Rocking horse markers
carousel tracks
                 back and forth
wearing out the breath –

Primrose babies
sticking souls to the sun.

Stolen selkie skins:

hang me out to dry in the morning light,
in the lore of long forgotten illusions of lovers
dying out to sea -
we forget it was all a dream.

I thought she was a painting, at first,
perfectly perched on the shore
with fingers laced around the sun and her
belly protruding sickness, her mouth exuding sores
and my heart creating sea salt waves against my breast.

We were the cat and the king -
slinking around her legs, between,
for a taste of something sweet, something sick
from within her.

She painted me the cat, her pet cheetah,
ever obedient and ready to run and
fetch the skin of lovers,
fetch the skin of hearts
that would never love again.