Hang me.
By my tongue from
the Tree of Life.
                 ​Repeat to me
​                  definitions of equality.
Let injustice drip
honey from my fingers
        ​ to remind me of purity
         ​that comes.
​                             Color,
let Eve curse
and Adam condemn
       ​ no man of his.
                   ​Baptised in red of
​                   the read,
         ​bathed in consciousness:
         ​what difference
​                             looks
like.
​                    Know companion.
       ​No compassion.
Syllables strangled
sensitivity,
                 ​the rawness of
​                 Rope. Burn. Words
                            ​ask again
      ​what it looks like.

Look at how large the tree is
with all of its branches
reaching for the sky.
Look at all of those people
hanging off the edge,
limply swinging into each other.


What a disaster.

one more time, she whispers,
she whispers violently, tremulously, like an addict whispers
to the fingernail marks in her skin, like persephone whispers to pomegranate seeds, like sin, and her whispers collect on dollar bills in the wind, and the money flies home but she's still sitting in that bin,

wondering if Hades ever regretted his win

the government shoots half of us with poison darts
and the other half with vaccines
and as the venom slides through our veins
the vaccinated half screams
why are you crying? we felt the same pain! .

looking at the ocean,
                the stars,
     feeling the vastness and
futility
         of all the universe--
         do you feel the
         rumbling of the sea
         like a heartbeat?
         can you taste the
         stars?

it's three pm on a thursday. don't tell me you have anything planned other than to sit on the back porch killing flies and picking the skin off your fingers. i know it's humid and full of lime outside but sometimes it's good to have sour lungs, you know? breathe it in. come outside.

an old old lady sat beside me at the bus stop. she was making a huge black and red and green and yellow blanket & told me it was for dreams. i didn't know what she meant so i nodded and offered to pay her bus fare. she was gone before i could look up and it made me think of cyclopes and orange peels

i'll live in the ocean one day!
for now, we're in glitter and rot, covered in murals and expensive tea none of us could afford. but one day i'll be a seagull too & i won't have to worry about the ground shaking anymore

im not outside anymore, and that makes me sad-
the smell of ginger doesn't hurt my nose, it actually reminds me of the bitter herbal store with drawers and drawers full of crickets and fungus and crushed things i can't name.

there's a moment before i fall asleep, the moment i wish for dreams again & the moment i put the glowsticks back underneath my bed. i guess it really works, because last night i talked to m and 77 for the first time since, what was it, ninth grade? or maybe fifth?
theres something really unnerving about the park next to my old school. there's something that's not quite opaque about it, like the dogs and the kids and the trees and the homeless men aren't real.

maybe it's a good thing i don't like hamburgers that much, maybe it's a good thing that most food sticks in my throat. that way i can focus on the important stuff, like drywall and plumbing

i really really miss you so much i think my heart might give up and lie down and sleep for millions of dinosaur years. i think my cells might stop and take deep breaths and i think they might explode simultaneously, it will be so beautiful like a fireworks show, i just know it

i wan t to die, it's slippery and hot, it's like... tears on frozen skin, you know, like hair and lime, the confetti kind of ugly
i think i might fall into a truck someday, i think i might be pimpled with fear hours before i die. im scared all the time, it's paralyzing and uncontrollable and i can't remember it now

i already know what i want written on my grave. i already know what im going to eat for dinner tomorrow. i already know how goldfish taste and i know what it's like to thaw a secondhand phone.

how are you going to tell me to die already! i don't know what qatar looks like, i don't know the smell of grapes or the color of grass. i have waterfalls to drown in and i have people to fall in love with, you don't know the half of it, i can't die i can't die yet