there is not enough soil
on this earth
under which
to bury You;

i will claw at the ground
until i find You,
i will exhume You
cradle You
until my rekindled warmth
reanimates You;

i will claw at the ground
and dig You out
of the grave
i buried You in
only to end up
dying in it myself.

i will.

two pulls. that’s all i had;
just two pulls of someone
else’s joint, and four
overpriced beers,
and i’m more ****** up
than i can ever
remember being.
flat bloodless faces
stuck to the walls
won’t stop looking at me
and i think a girl
is looking at me too
for the first time
in a long time. and there’s
a woman talking about
her feelings, and her voice
comes in threes and
sinks sinks sinks
and it’s all so important,
so important that
the vignette strangles me
more than it ever has.

somebody’s talking about
how she should stop going
to bristol. and there’s a guy
talking about getting fined
and my skin is tingling
where it usually dries and flakes
and it feels like the ******* i took
two years ago is seeping
out my pores and balling up
and i’m getting real quiet.
and there’s a trans person
talking about bleeding
on the bathroom floor,
i think, and they’ve lost me
in the words. i’m too dumb
to understand the not-basic
language they’re using, and
probably too dumb to know if i’m a
man in a man’s body or
a woman in a man’s body
that is just attracted to women.
******* weird, man.

as you bleed, remember that
another’s love
can never fill you
while you pick
holes in yourself

I finished my anthology today.