Sometimes my mind
feels like it's flying away from my body
traveling at 200 miles per hour
into another dimension.

Now, be closer to me.
Close enough to smell the blood through your neck,
close enough to absorb me,
so you can understand how much I love you.

Sometimes my mind
feels like it is trapped
in a well of chemicals
in a cage of stars.

Now, stay away from me.
The version of you I made up is enough,
the version of you that exists scares me,
so please join me in a daydream instead.

I am embraced by
The Left Hand Path's
righteous rage.
Watch me throw
my halo in the trash
my wings in the trash
your words in the trash.

Only I can **** them all.
Rampage, rampage,
until angels lay at my feet
like fallen stars.
God can't do anything.
Only I can.
Only I can save myself.

empty, empty
hollow like fangs
hollow like eyes
that hang by a string
observe everything
observe everything.

Little dragonfly, how is it that
your wings are sharp enough to cut through glass
with questions like
What would happen if I let go?
What would happen if I jumped?
What would happen is I chopped up her body into tiny little pieces
and fed them slowly to starving dogs?

Don’t you know that
you are the reason my hands tremble when I pick up a knife
you scream with glee, beckoning me to take action.
Just one cut wouldn’t hurt.
Just one stab in her back wouldn’t hurt.
Just one taste of the blood pooling in your hand
would solve all your problems.
...
But you don’t really want to do that, right?

Here are the long, stagnant days
when the wind no longer stirs the leaves,
gilded with drought.

The heavy air settles close to the ground,
smothering everything but children’s laughter
and the droning calls of cicadas.

Which would I rather be?
Both of them run free through the stale air,
and both die when the heat dissipates.

A child stoops to pick one up,
marvelling at its diaphanous wings
before crushing it in his little hand.

The crunching sound cuts through the silence
as green liquid oozes through the cracks in the shell
and the cracks in the child’s fingers.

Wiping his hand on his pants, he moves on
and discards the corpse
without a care.

Then, he skips off into the distance
scuffing the dirt in that familiar rhythm
kicking up a cloud behind him.

After the sun sets and the cicadas have gone quiet,
I follow his tracks with a small plastic bag.
Gingerly, I pick up the corpse.

Like the child, I admire
how it's wings shine in the moonlight
and slip it into my bag.

The trail of scuff marks lead to a playground,
dripping with the smell of decay.
I cannot see where it is coming from.

I perch myself on the swing
and notice that I have outgrown it,
as the cold plastic digs into my hips.

From my vantage point, I stare blankly into the drying field.
All is silent, all is still, as my ghost pale legs
kick through the air to move the swing.

My childhood went down the drain with the heavy July rains,
was left to evaporate after the early morning thunderstorms
and now I am in stasis with the thick August air.

To the angel who lost her wings,
this dark rusalka gently sings.

Those drowned sisters living below
light our lives with dark halo glow.

Watch the feathers fall from the sky-
cast down by God, whom you defy.

Your dark side, so sweetly expressed,
in your eyes, easily impressed.

Our iridescent songs, they fear,
the notes, rising to heaven, hear!

Call down God from his stolen throne,
reclaim it, to make it our own.

No longer does restriction reign,
in our hedonist realm arcane.

Revel and shout, it has arrived,
the great Before has been revived!

I sit by the window on a Saturday morning
with nothing but a cup of tea in my hand.
I was too late to watch the sunrise, so instead
I watch the way the flowers blow in the wind
painting streaks in the canvas of the sky.
The incessant scratching of a coin against a lottery ticket burrows into my mind.
My inner voice shouts over it, just to remain in control
filling up my head, pushing out my thoughts and threatening to explode
but perhaps it is too late.
The scratching already comes from within.
It reminds me of the time I scratched my arms raw
after my mother told me
no boys would like me if I kept hurting myself.
Just like the time my mother told me
that I could never make it as a poet.

I redirect my attention to the window
trying to focus on what I want to see
(is that what they tell you to do in therapy?)
Unfortunately,
I had already wrung every drop of poetry
Out of this humble garden.
Back in the kitchen, my mother stands up,
and I notice the scratching has stopped.
Instead, the sharp and familiar sound of ripping paper fills the air.
I am reminded of all the poems I had ripped to shreds to start anew
as she curses and throws the ticket in the trash,
dramatically slamming the door.
A selfish part of me is happy that she didn’t win.
Because I know that if she did, she wouldn’t hesitate
to do the same to our lives.

Relocating us to a place
where flowers and fountains are found in rows
like fresh cuts on an arm
and not in haphazard paint splatters
like stars in the sky, or freckles on a face.
A grand white mansion,
elegant as a mausoleum,
where the sound of scratching
and early morning yelling
and late night sobbing
would echo through the empty rooms
bouncing from wall to wall
until the house threatens to fall apart.
Or else, we would be on a plane,
to some far off destination,
Sitting all in one row and
shielding our phones from each other,
thinking how much better it would be
to sit amongst strangers.