Your fingers pull at shower-soft hair
Getting longer but not too long
Your eyes are dry but so is your tongue
Because you can’t find it in you to cry

Your chest is tight but it’s not the shirt you wear
It’s your ribs closing in on your lungs.
Your insides are crushed beneath the weight of their words
Pronouns buried like landmines beneath your skin
There’s a sickness inside you
Gnawing on your bones
Black tar sticky in your stomach
A violence pressing against your organs

You’ll feel better when you’ve changed your body
When your voice is deep and there’s hair on your jaw
You can take your shirt off at the beach
And flirt with girls at the coffee shop

Until then there’s no one who can understand
No one to get why you stand before the mirror
Running your hands over your flattened chest
Or practice walking like there’s something between your legs

No one asks why you’re not happy with cancer
Because no one is happy with cancer
But no one understands that your dysphoria
Is a sickness
And its terminal

I had a dream,
once when i was young,
of a tree
- a cherry tree
to be exact.
the tree's branches were covered
with white cherry blossoms.
they danced in the wind
and sang
and laughed.
all except one,
very out of place flower.
It was white,
yes,
just as all the others.
but it told all who would listen:
i'm a apple blossom
and they said back laughing and teasing
silly cherry, you're a cherry blossom
the cherry blossom tried to explain
how it knew it was what it was.
after so much laughter
and rejection,
the cherry went silent.
but every night it'll whisper to itself
i am an apple blossom
i am an apple blossom
i am an apple blossom
one day it tried again
and again
they laughed
and, in sheer desperation,
the cherry blossom picked itself
and
      f
        e
          l
            l,
to the ground.
its petals opened
to revel ,what the cherry blossom
had known all along.
a huge apple had been hidden
behind petals of an apple blossom.

I got high by myself
and thought about my father.
I wonder whom or what he thinks about before
he does disappointing things.

I thought about how I’m scared to lose
my mother, If when she’s gone
I’ll remember what she smells like,
the sound of her laugh.

I called you over, hoping you’d accidentally
fall asleep on my couch.
I’ve been having those dreams about trains again,
and you know how much I hate thinking about being on time.

We watched news bloopers
and laughed until our bellies hurt.

I was surprised when you told me
that my presence made you feel calm;

my mind had been screaming for so long
that I forgot I had a presence to begin with.

they emerge from the wooded neighborhood ridge and fringe at dusk
into breadth of lawn
& limb.
witchy chicks
casting banter n bitchcraft.
teenage dead end dreamers tipped in black magick lip gloss
& glitter, their
genderfluid familiars &/or wayward boyfriends apparate
in the street pink cloud spinning wheel,
& hawking bile.
****** stella smile.
swallow a hex, send a snap, tongue along his neck
promising to fold bodies before sunrise.
the effervescent gasp
of post-ritual clarity.

in the house,
is a kid.
a gig.
the devil with a younger grip.
& the kid thrills on a bit of the ol’
         u l t r a v i o l e n c e.
****** videogames, ****** anime, ****** mayhem n melodic music.
he is a conduit of dark energy.
a pure blooded offering of the stone age/video age,
mind in a kind of kaleidoscopic way.
he is me.
bred on televised bucket slime ceremonials.

she checks her purse.
drugs & snacks & juul & a pretty dead bird.
a daughter of delphi watching your kid.
tending to him.
trending him.
popcorn smelling him, the texas chainsaw massacre on vhs just before bed.
palace of teeth n twigs.
just a short walk to the edge and then its bath time.

             the demon version is grisly and cruel.
             the angel version is starry-eyed and adventurous.

to conjure some
  thing,
at the cliff jumping.
it was fun.

meet me in the morning.
tell me this is real,
old friend.

ruins.
fallen old bricks just like people.
like the reincarnation of a dead boy
into a living boy.
zombie johnny.
bought and paid for,
brujería.

naked son &
jungle stone heads.
in the olmec valley
is the lizard and the spirit and the pupae.
particle cellular fabrication/ or retrogenesis from within
a million points of light.
skeleton witch.

& with eclipse
he is the night.
he is the city skull and steel.
an electro-flesh apparition, bloodletting the living for fun
&/or nostalgia.

some ghosts desire vengeance.
some ghosts luminate from the dark,
& emerge as a needle of near perfect retribution.

the riches and gems and towering
years later.
the families of men who buried johnny moon alive
in a box in mexico.
death to them.
like retro-teen laughs in the horror movie exploratorium.
rituals.

He awoke and found himself
inside the body of another.
Safe in the darkness
gentle amniotic arms held him whilst muffled voices dictate his fate
“You’re having a girl” they exclaimed,
and he lay, wondering what this meant.  

He awoke and found himself  
inside the words of another.  
Inside the “brother” he never was, rather than never had  
and the “boy”  that scuffed his knees in adventure.  

He awoke and found himself
“a pretty girl”, “a princess”, “just like her mother”
so he closed his eyes and dreamt of another.
A world of train-sets and barber shops,
birthday candle wishes to replace long, curly locks

he awoke, and found himself floating
in space
his face, unrecognisable in the mirror.  
His chest seemed to grow branches  
as if by night the doctors that had pulled him from her womb
had suddenly discovered his secret.  

They grew like thorns until they were all he could see.
Those and the other boys, s h a t t e r i n g jigsaw piece body parts
every time he looked at them.  
He wondered why when their voices deepened, it was called a voice  
break and not a gift.  
A broken larynx. A birthday present lost in the post,
instead he unwrapped their super glued puzzle pieces,
piling them onto his plate
if you eat your vegetables, you’ll grow up to be a man.

“You’re having a girl”, more like “You can pass go but you will never collect 200 dollars”.
“You’re having a girl”, more like “earthquakes will erupt inside your mind every time you hear the words
“She”, “Her”, “Sister”
“You’re having a girl”, but he was  

“He”, “His”, “Mister”.

And when he cut his hair, and found himself  
in the arms of over-sized t-shirts and grown out leg hair,
they would say
“you look like a boy”, as if they expected him to protest in offence
but his heart feels as warm as the breeze that blows through thornless branches of trees  
and he wants to say thank you.  
He wants to say that the words  
“You look like a boy” manage to stitch up his jigsaw piece body parts,
for these are the words that cut through his mothers dresses and threw away the thread
these, are the words that in time would cause his voice to break;
remind him that he is not broken
and bury his girlhood beneath his bed.

how it unravels,
I have no
explanations

it’s drive lingers like cold wind
clouding judgment
grazing skin

it will never go as planned
but it is as entertaining
as it is indecisive

There are many people in my life that I love,
Let that be said now.
But...
I can't explain you.
You are home.
When my world crumbles, it crumbles to you.
It falls to bits around the only thing I am sure of-
You.
This life can mold me like wet clay,
But it will never touch you in my heart.
I can be so different I don't even know myself,
But I always, always know I love you.
You feel like falling into bed after a long day of doing good.
You feel like walking outside at dawn on a summer day and feeling the first rays of the sun touch my shoulders.
I could trace the planes of your face for a thousand years
And still find new curves to love the shadows of.
Your hands are the only ones that make mine feel completed.
Your laugh is the only one that feels like I am floating.
Your eyes are like wide galaxies, full of stars and secrets, with suns burning at the core.
Your mind is the only one that I would unravel my own for,
Your soul is the only one that can separate me by the atom, break me so completely that I am whole.
I could cry for loving you, my universe, so immense and so complete that I shudder just to hold the concept of you in my mind.
Some nights I lie awake and just love you until the morning reaches its pale fingers across my cheeks and tastes the tears there.
It's not that everything revolves around you,
It is that you ARE everything.
Everywhere I turn, there you are.
Every single moment of joy or despair I ever feel, I feel through loving you.
You spin the stars, you pull the moon, you raise the sun, you churn the sea, you sigh the rain, you sway the trees, you speak the thunder, you abase the gods.
In my world, you are matched by none
And every beautiful thing I ever witness
Is from you, is about you, is for you, is because of you.
You are my home.
Maybe that is rash, but I will have no other.
You are my home. You are the only person on this earth
Who makes me feel whole.
And I would give everything I have,
Just to see you smile and know I caused it,
My love,
My universe.