swamp green and the sky
is                   fire's crimson
leaves and vines   curving
wrap the      wall, shutters

to know that my skin, my
blood can warm the beast
trembling        in my arms
if   only you would let me

today,
my daddy told me i'd never be enough.
my chest opened up.
to know it is one thing, to hear it -

i am careless,
and i do what i can to hear it.
to let it trap me in the wallpaper
and the floorboards.

i will never move.

dear lord,
everything is too much,
not enough.

how can one be so full of desire.
how can one be so devoid of want.

my chest opened up -
that hole grows.
it never heals. scar tissue on
words but all it is
is emptiness.

isn't everything an island? isn't everything
lapped by tides at its very edges no matter
how far apart those edges are?

you learn to cope. uprooted and alive, maybe,
you learn. land is land. water is rivers, lakes,
and seas, still. the stars are the same.

(until they aren't. until one side is hidden from you.
have you been lying to yourself? for the sake of
comfort? did it work?)

it's still easier to make anywhere home when
home is no longer anywhere you can reach.

(but foreign lands are foreign lands.)

you are a silhouette cut-out.
if only i could fit into you.

out of proportion?
parts; poking and cratering
across my body to make
this mismatch of flesh.

am i god's leftovers?
or is that too divine?
i'm what everyone else
simply left behind.

i thought my heart
too big, too full, too red,
but the dark side of it,
is horror, near-dead.

disproportionate - yes.
in the physical, emotional,
metaphorical sense.

i am an uneven hill surface.
cannot complain when no one
bothers to clamour across it
to see the dark side of the moon.

every grudge sitting neat,
legs crossed and waiting
patiently/impatiently
on the tip of my burned tongue.

only, it has reached a point
in time and two decades and
two years; i am waiting for it
to be cut out.

gullible enough -
blood passed cold trembling fingers
and a sob caught in the throat,
gone at the sound of your voice

skin wide open and splayed in breadth and blood -
one never thought our skin could be so bright and
that blood would be so red, bone so white.

tears no longer nothing but heavy weights under the eyes -
their cheeks droop under it and bruise ugly and colourful.
the light's reflections are jealous. the rainbow dissolved.

no words to describe them except for what they are.
flesh and guts are human and animal and earth.
that's the grand scheme of every thing.

a drop in the ground and the snow parts like the sea -
is this a shift in colour or is it the sun behind the horizon?
god when you need him often shakes his head no.