i. i am lying beside you and i am looking at the skin on your face. i can see the air escape your mouth. soon it will be home to my lips, and they will caress yours with softness i never before possessed.

ii. life is not worth living if i am not beautiful.

iii. i am in an unfamiliar place. i am lying in a stranger’s bed. hands that i don’t recognise are turning my skin to ashes. i watch as my thighs burn. i am grieving for the dead ocean now occupying my eyes.

iv. i lift up the hem of my skirt, hoping you would see the dark starbursts printed on the skin on my thighs.

v. i have seen you without clothes but you have seen me without skin.

vi. he takes my skin and plants baby’s breaths on me, but they leave incisions in my heart. i am shaking now. i am in a shaking hell.

vii. i scoop up all your promises while you spill them onto another’s skin. i pick lies from the insides of your pockets. i clean dried blood from the corner of your mouth.

viii. my vein is tied carefully around your finger. it takes two minutes to **** the knot, and then me.

crime scene love story
my skin feels two things:
your skin, and cold porcelain
i’ll be quiet, i promise
even as you’re tying me up with
the vein you cut from my neck

all i wanted was for you to notice
the blood under my nails, but you
only saw the stains she left on
your neck

i promise after tomorrow i will
still be quiet, even as you crush
my bones and dissolve them
in tea

i am sorry that i mothered you,
and that my mother never taught me
how to love, or breathe air that didn’t
contain you

if only my mother could see her
daughter now, with her heart in your
throat, and your arms turning
her into rotten skin

tell her this is not a crime scene
this is where we fell in love.

Whisper to me the dreams you have while you
sleep       awake.
Now it's so late,
and it's the rattling of the pill bottles, the TV saying

Time's arrow only marches forward.

You touch yourself.
I touch myself.

I watch you through pixelated screens and we're shooting a film where the protagonist falls in love with a girl that
has                    no                      body,
but a nose underwater, and a heart in the microwave.

You have a ***** thing in your head.
There won't be sweat-stained linens to wash.