Allow me to
c o l l  e  c   t.
along tunneled ceilings^ and
unused bones.
They tell me that fire
is hot**
and lakes freeze [over in winter
but I can feel
china doll shar"ds underlying
skins. (Some mornings, when I wake up too early, they've protruded a bit so that they catch against my bedsheets and ensnare us. I grab a hammer from under the bed, pound out silt-size rubies and tangles of flesh)


(Oh, mother, mother, take me in, take me in)

look at me with
       unseeing eyes, fevered cheeks,
so I reach
down into my throat and pull out my stomach.
Here. Here! Touch! Taste!
This is me! Thus I am!

I clench it in my fists. I squeeze, nails subducting into pinkish jellies.
I lunge wildly for their mouths, I smear.
~Alas, they also lack tongues.

Fridays are for drowning.
Tipsy, tipsy, let me ~shell out my kidneys.
-Says he works at the smoothie bar, looks at me, has a heroic jawline, I

stumble.

Waves lash ankles, steer comatose foams - my waist is grabbed at as i slog into waters.

Smiles, nods, propels with wide eyes.

I ate with a fork.

Numbed spines, turn-table minds of froth and iron, we shook-
Holding the flashlight while he wrenched at engine and rubber in the rain. Ward of the physical touch. When it wasn't too wet, we'd paint the windshield to match infinity then get in and drive. Drive, just go! As we
Implode.

Or lie in feilds. How many they are, numerous as stars, grassbeds sprinkled with violets and clover. -So similar. So same. The roads (we'd race, tires screeching, screaming, outrunning, false) and clouds that look like bedroom windows.

Anything's better than home when you don't know you're sick.