I washed my hair for the first time in three weeks and
learned to stop walking on tiptoes
                I am the bitter taste at the back of your throat.
Some nights, I turn on every light in the house and sit awake picking skin
from my chapped lips
               I am full-circle and puncture wounds.
I wanted to be the girl to wear her heart on her sleeve but
my armband was embroidered with a *******

I was misinformed. Romanticised.
There isn't romance in 4am shudders, in skin stuck to the teal sofa or the sweat between my
shoulder blades. In yellow stained fingers nicotine or black stained lungs tar.
For protection, I tried pouring a ring of salt - and found myself
sitting cross-legged on the floor
rubbing salt into my wounds
           No ritual can protect me from myself.

i just can't stay
in babylon
all the time
i got to get out or i
forget
which world
is real
i have to sit
in the hut
on my own
crossed legs
i got to light
a candle
beat a drum
or just listen
to the music
of the jungle bird
gandhi's standing
on my head
singing
there's always room
for one more
in africa
and heaven

Stolen selkie skins:

hang me out to dry in the morning light,
in the lore of long forgotten illusions of lovers
dying out to sea -
we forget it was all a dream.

I thought she was a painting, at first,
perfectly perched on the shore
with fingers laced around the sun and her
belly protruding sickness, her mouth exuding sores
and my heart creating sea salt waves against my breast.

We were the cat and the king -
slinking around her legs, between,
for a taste of something sweet, something sick
from within her.

She painted me the cat, her pet cheetah,
ever obedient and ready to run and
fetch the skin of lovers,
fetch the skin of hearts
that would never love again.

i have sunk into a slow numbness,
perhaps because something broke over me
the second i saw you again.
i realized,
it's better to be in full-blown sorrow
than in a fragile happiness,
forever staving off the blackness.

but instead, i have sunk into a slow numbness.
perhaps because you look away from me now
the exact same way that i look away from you.
your aversion gives me numbness.
don't you see it?
that's all this ever was. a fear of the numbness. a fear of the pain.
your indifference gives me numbness
because who wants to feel it
when the ripping apart begins.

i have smoked to numbness.
i have cried to numbness.
i have raged to numbness.
i have laughed to numbness.
i have embraced the numbness.
i have dug myself into numbness
but you gave me the shovel.

you gave me the numbness.
and i feel absolutely fine. i feel nothing at all.

Think of the lightning bug you smashed
when you drove me across town
and rolled your window up and down
to blow the skirt above my knees.

You said, “that is the only part I missed
when you quit smoking cigarettes.”

Me, I have nostalgia for the drag –
a cylinder riding my tongue.
I’ll never get to **** your **** enough.

Tobacco and *** once swam in me
in layers like those Russian nesting dolls.

In my heart, there is the littlest:
someone of a different gender than I
who cuts their hair and papier-mâchés it
where your teeth discolored my thighs.

This runt takes the size of a firefly
but he has no freckles: he must be adult.

Sputter, “I think you’ll smash something
again I think it may be me you wreck
because I am not an insect behind glass.”

and I know you enough to hear you say
you can unravel me like cloth anyway.

Miss Ashdown
faced the blackboard
and chalked leaves
and buds and stems

her fat behind waddled
as she moved
from side to side
and Carmody said

if you peep through
the small hole
in the toilets
you can see

into the girl’s cubicle
and see their *******
you stared
at the teacher’s behind

half listening
to Carmody’s yak
she moved the chalk
along the board

a stem appeared in green
her plump arm supported
her chubby hand and fingers
Carmody went on and on

about what he saw
in whispering voice
now
Miss Ashdown said

turning around
her ******* bulging
behind her purple dress
here I have drawn the stem

of a flower and here
she said
pointing to the blackboard
is the bud and here is the stem  

and so she went on
pointing out each aspect
of the nature study plants
she’d drawn

see her down the front
with her pink bow
and ginger hair?
Carmody asked

you nodded
to his whispering voice
your eyes on the girl
at the front desk

next to Helen
she wears blue *******
Carmody informed
saw them this morning

you saw the girl
raise a hand to ask
questions about the plants
or to be excused to urinate

her blue cardigan covered arm
lifted the small hand
waving in the air
and here

Miss Ashdown said
is the root layout
see how its spreads
to gather food

and moisture
to the plant
she ignored
the raised hand

and the blue cardiganed arm
went down and out of view
and her over there
Carmody said

by the chart of trees
she wears white
you moved away slightly
from Carmody’s head

remembering
some one had said
that morning
he had fleas.