Joy

is hard to define

So don’t.

I cleaned today and un-tied a simpson’s themed scarf, a belt, and a checkered shoelace. I had to cut the shoelace with scissors though because the knot was too tight. When there isn’t rope, other long things we keep around the house, like these, become rope, and are used to hold my legs or wrists in place, usually both.
I organized my nightstand drawer and sorted pills by color and size. There were some really, really, small purple ones that fell out of a broken bottle. There were three gigantic ones that my doctor told me to finish, “even if it didn’t feel like I had an ear infection anymore.”
I washed my sheets for the first time in weeks and when I carried them down the stairs I could smell their stink. I get sweaty in my sleep even though the nightmares tapered off months ago. At 3:07 last night we woke up because we thought I wet the bed, which I do from time to time, so it's hard to tell the difference.

I am sweating in drops and he must be sticking to the couch. I bite his chest and his fingers feel like a dance on the back of my neck. Our mouths touch one another-- like soft, like protection; like sharp, like *******. We're still for minutes but my eyes are sprinting through his whole life eighty times over. This is a very big feeling. I think this is what it means to make love.

when he kissed me it felt like a plea. i could taste the ginger in my throat. when i kissed back it looked like a mountain. A certainly steep one i once hiked in oregon.

My chest is a hollow drum with skin
pulled over the top
trying to pass as alive.
It’s so loud
it makes the bugs
crawl back into the floor.

My nails are excerpts
that recall short spans of calm.
Breaking so often
that the only stuff left to bite
is bone.

My mouth is an independent
inborn system.
Swallowing
and ******* up the clues
to my own life.

My cup is the real Holy Grail
filled high with *****.
And for now
it’s enough.

Yes, yes, I can hear what you're saying. You keep talking, even when I burrow under my covers like an animal. Even when I close into myself like a bloodroot plant.

I'm sick of ******* smiling when all I want to do is rip up this carpet and dig a hole through the wood and the brick and the dirt and climb in and hide.

Would you let me be, let me rest where my deepest degrading voices are hushed? Your words would finally be gone and I'd be buried with dirt in my lungs, but it would feel better than being back there.

Five minutes would come and you'd snap from the loneliness and its awful cry. You'd shovel until your knuckles bled. You'd pull me out of my ***** nirvana and sit me up, and your eyes would look soft but I know your lips would not be. You'd do all this just to wake me up and shake me and tell me it was All My Fault. You'd hold my mouth open while you spat down my throat. You'd scream new songs for me to sing.

The skin near my eyes would burn from the salt and I would swallow your sounds. There'd be a kiss or we'd ****, or maybe you'd play with my hair while saying you loved me. But the whole time I'd be wishing my soul had stayed in the ground, covered in dirt, defeated and in the dark.