Beginning with the swagger of my palm to the squeezing sensation in my ribcage
I realize that the modern woman is alone among everyone else
from the creative orthopedic doctor whose joints resemble that of an
air craft plane your father designed in 1953
to the zany business owner that counts their own steps and
watches the calorie intake of the television dribble
there’s a bit of resentment on her polished fingernails as
she watches feminist prose on stage of a bar with no name
and she drinks cordially, the same intake that a midnight taxi driver
takes to keep his sanity, just enough to recognize street signs
and forget people’s faces
she sits in her dining room table and admires the lump in her throat
never feeling at home with dinner guests so she invents
party games that freefall off her legs into the carpet
that used to belong to a woman with no legs and a smoker’s mouth
but she doesn’t know this because she got it for three dollars
from her neighbor who isn’t alive anymore
and the blood stains of the old woman’s breath have long
disappeared and it’s appealing, yes very appealing
the modern woman is alone among everyone else
that comes foremost, thus the shy boys become isolated women
and the cycle of who is who begins to spin but the laundry won’t stop
piling in a corner of a room
and as soon as it stops the clothes drip from gender to gender  
between the tiles of the convenience store, between the
local gas station where men sit in their pickup trucks staring
at the spit on the ground and wondering whose mouth
it regurgitated from
and the lights become more fluorescent, more menacing  
so the solitary companions start coming later and later
until the sun sets and the lights are off and the only way to
know if another heart is beating is by crawling on the floor
hoping to find a pulse instead of an unsteady table, or a broken
chair or window howling but one acclimates to such conditions
while the modern woman is most intellectual of all
there’s a primitiveness, a strange longing to look behind her
to continue with watchful eyes darting long glances at the past
and sighing with relief that this is now and the future looks down with
convincing not conniving glares but still she falls into the
pit of her own stomach and memorizes the world upside down
the words jostle about,  the approaches of curious hands
become welcoming and the universe that once was an oyster
melts into a pearl with a sharp edge, a tooth made
out of pretty godforsaken, the speculated
creation of something eternally ****** will always be ******
but you don’t have to agree with it, there’s no reason to
shimmy into a container of shouts when you could
easily assimilate into a vat of unknowness, to
belong to something so you don’t have to be anything
yes indeed the modern woman stands alone in these dark ages
but the swagger has been reduced to a soft calamity, the
squeezing sensations in my rib cage have been swallowed to a
slow pull, grasp, released clench of a heart

The house smelled of vacant parking lot gasoline
it always had that odor, the one where things are very seldom touched
and the flies build their nests atop the sweaty ceilings
my  footsteps were perfectly carved into that carpet, like snow angels

when we had first moved in the floor was a soft white
with time, it bared resemblance of an old man who hadn’t shaved in two
days and wore the same tweed jacket every day
coming home was like a war kissing a forest fire,
those days the air felt colder
the television spit into the raw eyes of a man who called himself a father
this could have meant something had it been years later
and it would have been important had it happened twenty years before

I will say with confidence that in those days the earth was colder
specifically numb in those people whose hearts are like plastic containers full of
marbles, however, the world could seem like a refrigerator at times
to a 15 year old girl with the eyes of caramels
You could say that the poetry started with the dead houseplants
or the mother that secretly smoked cigarettes inside the laundry room
but the beginning starts with finding cherry trees in the
mouths of two twin girls that lived across the street, the
one with the lawn intestines spilling from their front porch

there is no one in the universe like you, that holds true especially
with people who play with guns and the boy that was born with fins
but, there is a difference with identical twins
Siamese children who lick each others’ spoons
and never have the correct name assigned to them
spending all of eternity looking in the mirror
******* telepathically, and who can blame them
                                                    
2

Pe­ppermints.
All of my memories have the taste of peppermint being
rolled around the tongue on an afternoon
and my mind waters.
I am especially reminded of this when I walk up the subway one night  
and the shadows seem liquefied and I could be anywhere but instead I am
in a city where no one makes eye contact and
my jacket still has the tag as it bites into my skin
I can hear the clatter of my shoes on stark concrete, the wobbly way I never grew into my own shoes
as a man approaches, jogging quickly carrying with him a suitcase
I notice he has a slight misstep to his walking and suddenly he sprints into a jog  
rushing, he slams into my elbow throwing me off balance
and the smell of peppermint is stronger now, resilient,
powerfully filling my head like nicotine  
as he violently slips his hand into my pocket
darts quickly back  and starts running ahead, never  looking back not once
Within seconds he is gone
I don’t realize what has happened, afraid that someone somewhere
in the dark distance, inside a car with tinted windows is watching me
observing my movements, wondering if I will call out to someone
My mouth is dry as I feel into my pocket and realize there is a note inside
it is a metallic sheet of paper with an address inviting me to paradise  
in the back of the card, there is nothing but  a meticulously engraved
spider, sinister in its appearance and yet reminding me that I am no longer a child.

Suddenly I remember; it’s Valentine’s Day.
3

In those days the screams of crickets were louder, much heavier.
Like the dew couldn’t stop them from rubbing their legs against their backs.
As if summer was an aphrodisiac for the mentally suave and the utterly alive.
Such convictions never last, I was an insect that year
an everlasting metamorphoses slowly molding my body
an eternal cocoon coating my veins and never shedding
these nuances of growing up, despite all this I was still a child wrapped
in a blanket that didn’t cover my feet anymore.
My mother used to go down to the basement on a regular basis,
I called it the swamp because it always made me feel as though I was
trudging through quicksand in a valley down below, separate from our own house
but that place was heaven to her I realized, the carbon monoxide clouding her head
the grassy windows, the way the clothes shrank in on themselves, like lungs but
never actually breathing, just inhaling
I don’t think she ever knew anyone was watching her, but I always was.
I would wake up at exactly the time my father left for work, or what we believed was work
and I would take my red binoculars and glide through the living room causing friction
with every step I took, passing the rooms of my older siblings down to hell
opening the door carefully, I would walk down two steps and stay there motionless
pressing my eyes into the glasses and staring
These endeavors proved futile, and once I had the ability to leave the house I never
looked back with nostalgia, never missed the coughs or the curled fists
but in those moments, I felt  time move slower, I could have stayed down there
a shameless spy, a trustworthy confidante
But life had better things for me than looking in on death, thought it more
suitable to touch horror than to always be catching glimpses of something
As boring as suicide

There was a day when things didn’t match the rest
I can blame this on naïve intuit or the childish way I chose to see things
It was Saturday and it was the 14th of February
Normally, my father was home by noon but today it was different
the air was stale, there was no movement in the house
It was beautiful outside and the only rarity was that there was a
taxi car parked outside our neighbor’s house
I stood up, poised as ever in the middle of the hallway
Had I looked deeper outside I would have noticed a strange man
next to the taxi car looking into our house, nodding his head with the
Rhythms of the grandfather clock, but I didn’t and who was I to know
As I gripped my binoculars walking into the place I knew so well
I didn’t know what I was to expect, there was an uncertainty
Behind the door that I felt what I had never felt before and have never felt since that day
However the long pause was it didn’t stop me from opening the door
walking down two steps and peering into my treasured binoculars
I didn’t know who I was supposed to find

What is literature to a convict?
with his name erased from his shirt, his memory
sitting in a warm chair
his only poetry is the girls he sees from across the glass
with jargon hanging from their sweaters
hem untied, tongue tied
“I want to live in a hotel” he tells his social worker
“all the way on the last floor at the very end of the hallway
I want the privacy in every suburban bedroom to be a joke
and I’ll laugh so ******* loud”
this prisoner has never killed a man
but his gums always bleed, like boiled beets
what is lost to a convict?
nothing, if you’ve searched long enough for it
“I don’t read, I have the best works inside my head
not memorized by pleasure, but by force
like a bullet to my knee, like a birthmark
not small enough to hide.”
“baby, I used to be a free man sometime”
and he was. He was free but he was also alone
a felon in his own right, grew a mustache
when he was only 15 and lonely
Walking alone one night he stumbled upon neon signs
upon god’s fruit, not everything is dressed in flowers
but a woman with caramel legs doesn’t need such luxuries
under dim lights, under smooth songs
this man found heaven to be boring
but the malaise in the gates of paradise
made candy melt down tight skin
“so this is fair. to be accompanied by hell
I could almost buy you a drink” he tells her
he tells her
he tells her
he tells her again
she smiles
this is not indulging
this is business
she used to write those words
on cigarette wrappers
until she could say it in her sleep
no love for poor men
and why does he wear a suit with a stain on it?
What a fool, she thinks
but this suit
this calamity of an accessory
was worn by that man’s
best friend
before, before the world turned cruel
before he knew what the difference
was between justice and closure
“sit down, tell me your bravery
spill it as easy as your skirt,
***** it as quick as the
dirt that’s been thrown on your face
you’re more than just
lemonade on a summer night”
but she swings her hair
and she asks for more
than a mortal man can offer
she wants the world
she wants the money he doesn’t have
and she calls him a thief
and she calls him a liar
and he’s left in a room
some bodies are nothing more than consolations
“I wanted more than a taste of life”
so he searches for her
but he gets lost in yellow taxi cabs
can’t decide whether he
should be in a hospital
or a cemetery
but he goes to a cathedral and
speaks with a priest
he beckons, he screams
he rips his hair off his head
in clumps they fall into his faded jeans
he clamors about the ****** he’s never committed
about how he just wants to be a famous writer
or a composer everyone cries to
he wants god to give him a bruise
he grabs the priests’ collar and kisses him violently
as the priest gasps for air, clutching nothing
all he wanted was a little peace, a little passion
why can’t you understand? None of this is carnal
none of this was made for the intention to be ****
he was sick of feeling ***** without ever being unclean in
the first place
and as he sat on the curb of that church, that solitary step
after being hurled by meaty altar boys
he wanders once more  
his crooked feet knocking posters and people
with closed eyes
until he reads the paper, until the obituary has her name
but it’s not her name he recognized
But her picture, the brutality of the night being exposed in daylight
he sees it everywhere, in the subway’s screens,
in the dry mouths of old men
there’s his ******, the one he’d been looking for all along
not committed by him
but a ****** nonetheless
set a flame for unforgiving service, for
inexplicable excess of satisfaction
set on fire like Salem witches
he wants to hold her hand one more time
it’s not the absence, but the obsolete
revenge, a platter served medium rare
what is vengeance to a convict?
an eye for an eye, a soul for a soul
he can smell the **** in everyone he crosses
he taps his foot in the downstairs
of the neon signs where he smells
nothing but sugar
and as they whisper in the dark
of the man responsible,
of the sentenced ready for his execution
he can almost taste him, running in shadows
and riding in comfort
Until he finds him at the bottom of a hotel
with his tie sloppily tied around his neck
and his eyes bearing the wicked semblance of a vulture
he goes upstairs
all the way to the top floor at the end of the corridor
and as he walks he can feel his steps amounting to something
this is what he was born to do, since birth these
were the footsteps he was told to follow
the death he was meant to document
savagely prepared for him to feast
he taps his shoulder after this ******, this sadist
has opened the door, ajar
clean and astute, clean cut
our inmate throws him into the
blow of hardwood floors, lamps flying
make his eyes go wild
his spit falling into the carnivore’s mouth,
he asks what is solitude to a slaughter
he trembles, he’s alive in this moment
wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his suit
digs his fingernails into the whites of
this ****** body and he cackles,
he’s a raven, ravenous
he’s a ghost ******* nothing but hot metal
grinding his teeth, blood flows out of sockets
the shrieking echoes, pain splinters the walls
but nothing is heard because no one is there
this is love, this is the romance he
always wanted
gouging the egg yolk out of another man’s eyes
our hero cries a primal cry
and repeats her name over and over again
like a prayer told too late at a sermon
and as he drown this poor man, who is
no vulture anymore, but a wet parakeet
he recites the words he had written into a paper napkin as a child
and if the first apocalypse ends the world in flames
the last Armageddon will end in a deluge
he watches the criminal’s head swells
drunken with happy fervor, he celebrates
by resisting arrest
what is literature to a convict?
his life told in verse
the catharsis this sad existence could never offer him
until it did
and he smiles
a scam to end all scams

In the Dead Sea I met you
sinking in the mud, I waded
between this pool of fish
I was ***** and unkind
quick sand, swift drought
laughing with a closed mouth
like noon spilling into a water cup
my eyes dried
whispering my secrets into a
country with no name
in the Dead Sea I met you
caught in a caravan
caught in your headlights
49 reasons to uncurl your fist
and lay something breathing there
like my thoughts dehydrated
but this is about you
in the Dead Sea I kissed you
lazy eyed, drooling over sunken ship
like sunken lovers, like
sunken friends
nothing grows
except the skin around the
exit wounds
around the tattered lungs
the ravaged cartilage
but you know that
but you know that
in the Dead Sea I loved you

I've seem to have lost my youth, I fear it was never there to begin with.
All the fuel that was riddled on my tongue as an adolescent is rubbing off with time, like a word I don't know anymore.
I keep darting to women on bus stops looking at their knees and wondering if all the lines there are like the rings in a tree, like the creases in flowers rich men buy for their honeys.
All these bodies piled in a room full of smoke, in recollections of other times they were in smoky rooms with strangers but all I taste, remember, is the sun on my forehead while Spanish guitars play nearby and there's a million voices, curling into chatter, into banter I can reconcile.
The night is young, this is the way to die if you're ever going to but the days are permeated under my shoes; I walk into 99 cent bargain stores and don't see plastic like she does, do not see the degradation of objects that never dissipate but easily break. The ***** floors of feet that live in small apartments, that dry-heave for the cheap cigarettes and low cost security cameras for their victim-less crimes. The resilience of things that grow in the only place they know where.
No I see a 25 year old girl stocking the shelves and watching the soul in her hair run for the door, for the foreign on her skin evaporating into the electrical fans, her golden years on the ankles that will one day twist in slippery showers, in greasy paved roads, in the heels she never learned to wear.
I see my generation through glass windows, through transparent doors, in between every beer I sip I don't find myself losing my worries into the inside of my bra for later inspection, under my wallet for when the party goes into the graveyard hours and I'm frozen in an unknown couch. I don't think about the time she left or the time he lied. Not about the knots everyone you meet leaves, or the heartbreak residue in drawers you don't open anymore. No time.
Standing in front of cold deli aisles, there is no resurrection of when my friends would call me by my first name, no remorse for the chances I didn't take when my shyness didn't burn on my face. A father that had a heart attack at the beach and I wasn't sure if the tears were because mortality was there holding my hand or because there was sand in my eyes and would it matter?
The neglect in my stature, the depth that is lost every time my head falls on a new pillow once again. When they talk about the jokes they wrote down on napkins, on fast food places at midnight, when the leather jacket they smooth down but all I see is the thread that is unwinding below their waist, the condiment stain on their napkin and how so very easily beef reminds me of the hospital.
I want to say that yes I am young, I have always been. That nothing has changed since when I was 12, that when everyone picked up their addiction I chose mine as well. That being alone is like a rock you take off the ground and you hold it for so long you start forgetting it's there until your hand untangles, until your jaw unclenches. You look around and you notice everyone is laughing and you try to as well but the second is gone, eyes are blinking, the sun has turned slightly and there is nothing else to do but grab another rock. I'm afraid I've exhausted myself too quickly.
I imagine the exasperated nostalgia of childhood is because there was no past, no better memories to cling to, you can't look back when there isn't anything there. But you begin hanging out in dim places, where the people are grittier than the seats in bars, in subway cars. The gods in your desk start to lose meaning, and the love, all that love, stops defying gravity like the bags under your eyes. The guys with caramel complexions treat you like the rosary on their chest, with reverence only when it's Sunday. The way the sweat glistens in yellow lights.
and if I didn't exist in all of that, then I wouldn't want to.

I don't want pity, no ****** white room, no Judas kiss; just a simpler truth that you wouldn't understand and I wouldn't expect you to.

There is a man in my dreams, always. He is neither foreign nor familiar. He never speaks but on the occasion that he does he is not boastful;
His lip never trembles or bleeds.
"All my days are the same, except some" he whispers.
" I should've been a woman, I should've been a man. I should've been anything but solitary knee caps & jail cells. I've lived in nothing but crowded apartments, fed on the flooded chatter of open windows!
Those moments where your heart is a hummingbird & the girl you love keeps skinning her ******* knee & for that there are heads being scalped."
I never reply to these confessions. He could be a lawman or a taxi repairman & it wouldn't make a difference because his missing teeth that he covers with dentures & the eyes that never fully close tell me I don't have to. This is not my show, not his airtime on the television. There's never a punchline, you see. His sins are never absolved & the only redemption he gets is that there's never dirt under his fingernails.
"I have lived enough" he continues
"To know that the samurai sword you try so hard to use for defense is only a swollen reminder that you've always been background noise at dinner parties, you don't know where to go without bumping into someone; the time is not over yet.
"There is no romance in finding your war and conquering it. My mother used to kiss me on the lips & my father used to beat me with a stick. You'd think these calluses would turn into poetry people would never be ashamed to read but my hands never stopped touching dirt."
He believes I'm listening, believes I understand. Looks at me & doesn't see a child; doesn't untangle the confusion inside the pockets of my dress. This, is the only time honesty counts.
"Somewhere between the hangovers & choking on all the keys I saved in coat pockets I couldn't figure out whether this was worth remembering, worth regurgitating to my children or women on bus stops
"I used to beat my wives & pretended that god enjoyed these charades; that my knuckles wouldn't feel so delicate, wouldn't be this tough if I wasn't designed to be. I looked at their cherub faces & all I could smell was gun powder, for this I never held a gun."
I looked at this man, cloudy-eyed. This man who belonged to no one; who never blew the dust off my hair but instead flicked ash onto my shoelace. This man with no name who forced me to hate him and yet when I closed my eyes there was only tenderness.
I wanted nothing more than for him to tell me something that made me comfortable in my own bed again.
"You see girl, you soon come to expect rooms without windows, people like burial grounds, that the shimmer doesn't last forever.
One day it's 9 p.m. on a ******* Friday night and you feel like a hospital rug, like a ****** motel carpet, like all the floorboards where your wife said the money you have to offer is not worth to die for and then what do you got?"
I wake up alone.

we are the insects trapped inside homemade fly traps
glued on at the roof of the mouth
underbelly, I run around looking for trouble
trailer park princess, bar-fights in every space between my teeth
I'm a child of a child

I beat my paper wings against the shamelessness
Dance like the cigarette breaks are forever
Swisher blunts for the forget-me-not flowers inside backseats of cars, cabs, stolen automobiles
Revenge, locked jaw police officers like the fathers that never let you hold a gun so you become one

Taste blood, tongues, beauty in chaos
loose lips, stolen drugstore mascara and no more bruised knees
Boys like soft but you're the ******* Armageddon, knuckle-ring gods and all
so the men want to be kings and you grow up a feral cat sleeping in twin sized beds with a mouthful of curse words

Lord of the flies, lot lizards and truck-stop races
gritty bathroom graffiti is the cathedral but prayers never stop
Taverns with your name and the angels that spit
The television static never ends here, cicadas  
Doors with mosquitoes held hostage, home for supper
wasted by dessert

Down in the dirt, grimy bathtub I unearth all the things I couldn't drink away; all the motel fantasies, ***-stained skirts and the neon lights waiting for the swarm

Lately, all the darlings have started tasting the same and all the books keep preaching about the catharsis of going forward and I'll not be condemned to be Lot's wife's' tragedy but ******* this is growing up and everything is shrinking like the bible my mother threw in the washing machine by accident. All the wild has gone to my fingertips and there is no longer an energy to board trains to god-knows where because I know better now.
I don't longer miss you and I call my father daily now and I have a fond appreciation for dead things. Sometimes I think of all the times I prayed and all the times I sinned with you in mind and I know this is the guilt of poets. We are the victim and the instigator, we play our cards right and you resent us for it. And I write to you because it's easy to say things to people you hate. Like kissing someone and not tasting their blood but someone else's and enjoying it. Revenge in, not one, but all the ways you know how.
I often dance naked to Claire de Lune, do you know why? There's an elegance to being primordial and vulnerable. There's grace in things we find obscene. I cannot dance, mind you but I dance thinking you're watching. Much like shaking the hand of  a married man and lingering with his wife within earshot, there's a thrill knowing you'll be caught.
Thus, I write my inhibitions and fears in poetry hoping you'll someday read them with absolute stoicism. I dare you to show a little emotion. I dare you.

Today I thought about burning bibles and how my house is surrounded by cobwebs and how do I explain that to people.
It burns my veins when I think of the god that lets children die and creates maelstroms inside people so they’re left begging for change in the streets and all those prayers are like pinpricks on my forefinger because if I was created in his image, then why do I curl my fists when I look in the mirror
It’s not easy being cut-cloth and vacancy motels in foreign cities I will never return to because I know their owner
I know the freckles in your back like constellations in my head
I've heard your voice when I was on the bathroom floor sinking, sinking
There’s no anchor in this ship and the tossed waves are like your tousled hair
and maybe the sternum in your chest is the Bermuda triangle
but I could have sworn I held your hand, I know this for a fact
because my pulse danced with yours those days
but now it’s these days and I can’t get a grip
and I bend my knees but the bruises are stubborn
I keep opening doors but I don’t know what I’m looking for
I want to call, for help, to my mother, to my father whose clothes cling to him like death and I want you to know that this isn't about you
When I was a little girl, I would go to church and hope that someday my knuckles would get kissed and not murdered
I wanted everything my parents didn't get
I used to think it was because god was too busy with other people's families and that's why their lawns were always greener than ours  
I wanted for you to exist so badly, I forgot that I did too.

-I've learned to take the sheets off of the bed and wash them and if my hands were big enough I would curl them into fists and call you to tell you that your ghost no longer resides in here but I don't have your phone number anymore and I don't miss you quite as often.

-You're white flag, your war-rage reverb inside a rib-cage and there's no microphone to mutter into. Slam poetry isn't your thing but ******* sometimes there's an itch, a scream half-muffled that wants to talk about your hair raining down on their cold pillows just before the lights go out.

-I've never owned an ashtray despite the chimney that mimics my mouth sometimes. It's telling your mama you made it for her birthday because you don't want to see her face every-time you check in once again for the last time into a hospital. Even if making it is keeping a plant alive.

-The scattered light rays that travel into your room in the afternoon when you're getting drunk alone again and don't you dare call me bad because baby, I was raised that way. You can't put a band-aid over a broken bone. There's a fire in my palms no psalm can actually pronounce.

-your writing career has plummeted so now you sit in a bus stop as people tell you their life story and you feel like a priest but there's never any relief and the confessions get more heavy so you write about it but there's never anyone to hear, and even if there was would it heal the bruises?

3rd grade, chipped tooth from swinging on the monkey-bars that were still wet from the rain. I held your hand even if you were a girl, too. How everybody teased. You kissed me behind the stacks of books in the library. I thought about telling my mom. I wondered if god saw.

2. 13 yr old stealing eyeliner from the drug store across the street. You blowing smoke into my mouth after-school. I was spell-bound. You taught me words like "****". You forgot my birthday and I gave myself a bruise punching you in the face.

3. he was in the hospital. I couldn't sleep for three days. I never told him about any of this. We spoke only on the phone and I wish he were sincere when he was sober. I realized then that people are revolving doors. I still love him. I think about him often. He's a best friend.

4. You made me lose so much blood. I thought we were more than child's play. You showed me your favorite artist and I showed you my soul. You took your coffee dark and I tried so hard not to smoke in front of you. He stared at my legs and I told him I took three different types of pills that are supposed to make me happy and he just kept on staring.

5. loading.....

I never meant to be wet cement
because you gotta understand that sometimes my hands are
earthquakes and there's no reason behind it and you just have to understand
I tell you baby, I miss you
and you say learn how to zip up your dresses for your own good
See, we grow up
we become atheists and we wish on stars that are dead
we do illegal things but we apologize to our mothers
and this is being okay

I keep wishing to be in Nevada
that we would chase the sunset all the way to Florida  
and then you'd talk about your clinical depression and
I'll tell you about the time my father kissed my mother's knuckles
on my birthday
You'd tell me you're in love with the way I always have a story to tell
and I tell you I wish you had something better than a storyteller
I don't speak about browsing through my parent's wedding pictures for days after their divorce, or the way I couldn't push my bully off their bike
But I wanted to, how I wanted to
Instead I tell you, god has been playing hide and seek with me since I was a child and I keep winning because he hasn't found me yet
and I'm beginning to lose faith
You tell me about the poplar tree in your back yard and writing an angry poem on it's bark and that's how you knew it was fondness
I say all I'm looking for is a slowfuck under the sun
and you tell me it's okay  
because at least for once, you'll want the same

It's like you're left with extreme paralyzing psychosis, or deja vu, or an epiphany that you greet with swinging fists and bouts of palpitating aggression that doesn't have any sense of direction.
It's like when you try unlocking the door to your house, but the locks have been replaced with new ones and there are people inside that you don't recognize but they're strewn across your expensive living room set that you bought when you were manic.
Then you realize that your home has replaced you. This always happens.
Maybe this is the plot twist to your life. You're the one that's haunted and your house is afraid of opening the door when you arrive.
See, perhaps it's tired of being inhabited but not being properly lived in.
You don't remember seeing an eviction notice but it feels exactly the same like the time he abandoned you during a thunderstorm.
Except it wasn't raining but your mind was already creating apparitions of puddles and floods.
You can't say goodbye to things, you can't let go. You claw and you scream but nothing ever comes back.
It's like missing the last train home. Like, forgetting about your birthday. It's like deleting a number knowing full well that you have it memorized but it's the thought that counts. right?

When I was a child, I was the riverbed's bend. The silhouette of a person from far away smoking a cigarette. I was the blushing sunset and the barred teeth of nightfall, moon's jutted chin and all.
But as I grew up, people became less tree-house, more crawlspace.
In his drunken days, my father once went out with a crowbar shouting at god for giving me clinical depression instead of a man or a hobby.

When I was a child, I would hold hands the way you hold a loaded gun. No one told me that some people are bullet teeth, trigger wounds, and pistol shot screams. That I would become one of these statistics. Those analogies. My grandfather once told me that the bravest people of all sometimes go a little mad. But you have to find the darkest recess of your mind and tell it that you know what it looks like with the lights on. I no longer need a flashlight.

When you're a child, you're the billow of a skirt. The hum of a refrigerator door in July. You could be the sun's glare or the sky's mouthpiece. But as you grow up, you start blowing out candles for other people's birthdays. You begin looking at the cracks of pavement rather than moths clinging to streetlamps. your house slumps its shoulders whenever you open the door. and why?

if none of this makes sense, regard it as a poem.