The horror streaks down from the bathroom walls &
Into the basement where we’d lay for the following weeks
I could not get the smell out of my brain,
Eucalyptus and spearmint and
The bloating pieces of your body soaking up the leaky sink
Skin beginning to soften and swell and bruise
The staircase leads me to a room of shadow
Where every other crevice hides a little spider
Who is too shy to crawl about and too sad to spin its web
I can’t stop seeing it reliving it there are no
Metaphors to capture this grief

There is no time, either

So with an hour two I have to pack my life away
And if it can’t fit into this backpack, it might as well
Have never mattered, or existed at all
It’s like they’re beating it into my head,
“She’s dead, she’s dead”
I leave the house with an empty bag
She’s dead, she’s dead

My grandmother’s guest room, my father’s guest room
I can’t get the decency of a living room couch
But it doesn’t matter, if I’m not alone
Maybe I am alone
I’m the only one in this room
What the ****
What the **** is poetry when you’re dead

So we’re getting up again, pulling some clothes from my bag
Don’t need these pants, don’t need that shirt,
I have enough socks to last
I don’t need anything that I can’t fit underneath the seat
On the airplane back to New York
So we’re going again
Let’s just go.
It’s another day at this point.

But am I on the plane or am I
Back in the kitchen
Watching her spurt her poisonous spit all over the hardwood
Violent spasms and slams and ****** fluids flushing in large,
Bellowing waves, struggling to find any shore
I am so far away from everyone that I know
The plane lands
I find my next gate

There are songs I’ve loved all my life
That I’ve tried to apply many meanings to
Something I could imagine and manifest
And sing and sing and dream and
Lie awake wondering if I could ever be
In their position, even as I lie
Feeling the exact same thing
Through the music, I feel everything
Completely, for the first time
Now that I am old,
The tune is merely familiar
It is the air that I breathe
The cause for my sobs and terrors
The creation of my sorrow heart’s tomb
Has become my morning coffee
The taste a bit bitter, the cup a bit small
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed
By a bit of cream

Another plane lands
I realize I’ve lost my luggage,
Send a text to my dad
Who believes this has everything to do
With my plan to pay off student loans
Or more so, that I might have the audacity
Of asking him to buy me a meal, every now and then.
It’s alright, that wasn’t part of the contract
I feel silly for forgetting
My phone battery dies, and the screen goes blank

I am a ghost to everyone
Can’t you feel me slipping away?

Everyone that I’ve known
I could be gone to them forever

I arrive in New York
I make it home
But I know better, I know what happens next
I haven’t slept in weeks but I’m in a dream
I’m in New York, but I’m in the bathroom
Watching the ooze,
Smelling the gore
All the different ways a set of fingers can twitch
Before they lose their ***** and stop forever
Blonde hair on the floor
Cold, hard skin
Softening once again, in the pools of this memory
I can’t escape you, I can’t find the exit
The doors to this house are all imaginary
It’s been so long
Time hasn’t passed at all

But I am in New York,
Somehow

That’s right, I remember it now.
I learned my lesson, I’ve done it all before
This memory is going to stay
But I am the one to leave
Over and over
And over
It’s gonna be this way forever, I’m sure

There isn’t a way to avoid it,
Go around or under it
You just have to leave
You just have to keep leaving

So I enter the doorway
Get dinner
I sleep on the bare mattress,
I don’t ever,
ever,
unpack my bags.