It starts with gin and pills,
maybe not both at the same time,
but a kind of much needed peace.
I chase the feeling across towns; the calm in my
chest, the sky breaking open with relief.
I exhale,
and the world exhales with me.

I let go of all that I could never
carry.

I crumble into myself.
I take dreams of broken teeth and empty suitcases and
willow branches to weave a nest. It’s a small,
******, rock-bottom nest, but it’s mine
and I don’t give a ****:
I love my rock bottom nest.

I dream myself a thousand lifetimes.
In one, I am begging to be forgiven on someone’s doorstep.
In another, I am sinking to the bottom of the river
and asking: does this make me pure?
I dream myself books and teak and petrichor and
liquor, I dream myself
a new reflection, one less scarred, please -
(these days I just look at myself like – Oh, this
****** up thing? I got that in a no man’s land.)
I come back to myself and find it all so simple;
where the hell am I gonna go if not up?

I wear red.
I am celebrating something.

In a fit of fury, I leave.
I leave a lot.
Somewhere off the highway, I leave myself too.
I bury her in a shallow grave because I might need her,
and resurrection is so easy
when you know what the ghosts want to hear.

I learn the taste of liminal places intimately.
I smoke too much, I don’t drink nearly enough.
Once, I spend a whole month without ever leaving the house,
like an afterthought.

Like an afterthought, I forget to celebrate
birthdays and anniversaries and lives
boiling in me.

I leave faster.

I buy sturdy shoes and a new jacket and meet
people who say my name the way I have never
heard it before. They hold my name in their mouths
like it is precious, like it is something to
treasure.

a Novel Concept,
and I am not ready.

I take my belly and turn it into a pitcher,
all I do is pour all that I could never say.
When I hit my knee against the table, I scream.
Does it hurt that bad? God, no.
I just have a lot to make up for.

I eat like the cavalry is coming,
wear combat boots
to all the nicest restaurants.
I let myself be nurtured.
I kiss men who… well ****, they’re not going to love me,
you know? But we can both agree to love
this moment.
I walk six miles and never even feel a thing.

My heart is strangely quiet.
My heart hears five “I love you”s in a year and
says nothing.
I **** it with my broken nail, say, “Don’t embarrass me,
come on, say something, for ****’s sake”
and my heart, the ******, locks its mouth and
throws the key into the river.

Later, I understand.

Later I say: good on you. At least one of us
is using their brain.

But anyway, at some point
I start wearing red.
And I got this feeling I can’t shake-
it’s like I am celebrating something
but I don’t know what it is.

I just know that it is important.

It might be my life.

maybe we’re tired of tragedy maybe the world said: welcome home, it’ll be a beautiful ride. maybe the world lied, maybe the lifelines on your palms are no more than some ancient tragedy dragging its teeth on your skin like an animal that refuses to die
no matter how many times you shoot it.

maybe i’m applying lipstick in the front seat of my car and the leather smells like my friend rushing out to throw up. we are all rushing out to throw up because we live in a time of cataclysm, every day might be a new catastrophe.
nuclear apocalypse is the new black
and we are already putting shotguns in the trunks of our cars.

you blow a breath of smoke and i want to know why everyone tells me that cigarettes are bad for my health when the sky over my hometown is no longer the blue my grandmother remembers, and why you think that i am destroying myself when the world is being destroyed and you just throw the leaflets away. we are not trying to **** ourselves here, we were just born exhausted, and i don’t see people in the streets, i see moving muscles and bones. we all want enough breathing room but our lungs would break apart if we got oxygen.

there are people who have never even seen the stars and now you tell me that elon musk wants to launch us into space. to do what?

to destroy, which is the ancient tragedy, which is the only thing we know how to do right. i weep for the stars and for the galaxies and for some passengers two centuries into the future, the child with curly hair pressing her nose to the shuttle window as Earth burns burns burns,
the only legacy we ever left.