women don’t die,
they vanish into thin air or
they melt
into a puddle on the linoleum.
plath didn’t die,
she dropped the deadweight —
see: her headless body on the kitchen floor
bloated & ready for consumption.

from the platform, someone asks
where is this going?
from the tracks, two q-trains answer
with horns that sound like
i'm yours, i’m yours, i’m yours, but
when one pulls in
the other pulls away.

Fridays are for drowning.
Tipsy, tipsy, let me ~shell out my kidneys.
-Says he works at the smoothie bar, looks at me, has a heroic jawline, I

stumble.

Waves lash ankles, steer comatose foams - my waist is grabbed at as i slog into waters.

Smiles, nods, propels with wide eyes.

I ate with a fork.

is God by your bedside
weeping against the bookcase
and the cabinets in the
kitchen, filled with long
grain rice shudder and
tremble, vibrating against
their hinges --
it's all over the floor, you say.

it's all over the floor.

He's tapping on the hardwood floor
to draw me out of the cracks, the
slender peels of sun stretched down the
hallways, arcing across the patio,
the way hard working men
rap their fingers against the walls to find
studs, stick pocket knives in the frayed wood
beneath the house--

shakes me out of the sand, viciously vibrates
me into his palms, tears me from
deep considerations
where i've already grown
where my roots have struck out
in all directions, says not in this place
not in this soil
not in this way

and I go where he pleases, kicking or
weeping, sometimes with ankles smarting,
raw from the whipping

not this place
not this soil
not this way