An apple rotting, shut away too long,
not a bite missing.

Did you know,
appleseeds can’t actually
produce
trees?

No, you have to cut a branch off,
plant that in the soil.

Soil’s ancestry
leading back  to
bleached bones
left out in the scorching sun.

The grass grows taller there,
with ancient hymns
cooing each blade
all the taller still.  

Yes, the grass grows taller there,
but my stomach
is full of stones.
Leaving pilgrims starving,
nothing left to crop.
Tobacco fields replace
valleys of grass.

The day my father
tried to kidnap us,
there was breakfast waiting downstairs.
I tried to eat an apple, but
stones already filled my stomach.

When I was a little girl
no older than five,
I ran around our neighborhood,
my entire world at the time,
and helped
an aging neighbor
find her lost canary.

Then
when I was an older girl
still no more than eight,
I walked around our neighborhood,
small in retrospect,
carrying a baby bird left for dead.
Like a flower smothered by curtains,
wilting in the heavy shadows of my hands.

A year later,
I hold my finger out
to some bird perching in our tree,
free as dizzy dust
playing tag in the streaming light of day.

Now I’m left with
limp party streamers
swaying in the wind,
dancing with scattered daffodils
in gutted greenhouses

But when I curl my hands just right,
like a folding lotus,
I can still whistle
to them.

I went and took a nap out in the woods,
letting blankets of leaves
drown sinking stones,
settlement in my stomach.

I almost caught a gust of wind
spilling through cracked fingers,
sticking to my hair.
Palms open - arms outstretched,
I shook hands with nothing.

Concrete dreams flood
grooves of the brain,
thick in my mind.

Skipping up a tree
sing to the sky,
catching wind beneath wings.
Palms open - arms outstretched,
carried by nothing.

Every single night this clockwork chimes,
crypts where restless crickets
pray from dusk to dawn.

Air thick,
suffocating between
sheets and mattress
stones still sinking.
Let me melt, sink simply.
Palms open - arms outstretched,
begging for nothing.

So I went and took a nap out in the woods,
mistaking trees for friends
and wind for food.
Palms open - arms outstretched,
suffocated by nothing.

Hugging air,
thick in my arms
like the stuffed animal I grew up with.

I don't know how to care less.
I don't know how to expect less from myself.
Cicadas borrowed my pores
the last 17 years
and now they're uprooting,
stealing any semblance of calm.
I've always written off
that crawling beneath my skin
as anxiety plucking veins, but
all this time I've been a home
even though I have no home.

I can't afford to not know.
Every indecision costs me $30,000
and a lifetime of debt.

I wish I could burrow,
borrow someone's pores
and pretend this solitary confinement
is actually a warm hug
from my favorite sweater
that I don't even have to wear
a shirt under,
because the itching never bothered me.

My room smells like a funeral.
Suffocatingly sweet
stuffed with well wishes
but I never heard the penny plop.
My mother never let me drink her special juice.
Pants around ankles,
crying in the garage because
she just couldn't make it to the bathroom,
could she?
A child isn't meant
to change
her parents'
diapers.

She bought me a bouquet of flowers,
a peace treaty lined with thorns.

I often think upon my funeral,
and I have a suspicion
it would smell a lot
like this.

Dust off fingernails,
blowing cuticles clear.
Orange peel skin
when scabs have dried over-
where shall I swim now?
Hot tub blood boiling
then bruises disappear,
shelved away in the attic.  
Deadly dull
so I chomp,
bit, byte.
A byte is 8 bits
binary math, base 2
not 10.
Ones... twos... fours
and so on
****, am I bleeding?
Dried pool in the sun,
metal tongue lapping dust
hieroglyphics lost in translation.
Back, back, back
to routers.
Why don’t I paint my nails?
She asked me that today.
You don’t highlight the anxious massacre.

Leave my bones out to dry in the scorching sun.
Bleach them white, flesh falling
until I’m unrecognizable.

Quicksand hearts sink into
disappearing rotting carcasses-
The grass grows taller there.

Door left ajar,
swarms of honeybees
humming battle cries
despite their last breath.

I think they mistook me for the apple over there.

Tobacco fields replace valleys of grass,
letters pleading for his girls to come home
reveal a shellfish man exposing sleeves.
"Come join me!"

And maybe that’s why
I feel some sick connection
to you when I’m high.
Like father, like daughter-
I’m waiting for some self induced
Alzheimer's to set in.

An apple rotting, shut away too long,
not a single bite missing.