we smoke hand-rolled cigarettes just to be awash in the splendor of it all, but i don’t tell you i like to feel the disintegration of my organs in a thick cloud of menthol & formaldehyde.  i don’t tell you i still press fingers to the back of my raw-skinned throat, just to know i haven’t lost the courage.  without new scars healing on my delicate wrists & sweet-sour pills dancing in my blood, i am nothing worth remembering.  every night, i fall asleep with my cat snuggled warm against my clattering bones & measure my stomach with trembling palms, afraid that i have suddenly erupted from my wispy shape into something breathing.  a girl of no substance, dark matter where flesh once lived, hollowed perfection in the stiff arrangement of limbs on a crooked frame.  you kiss my knees goodnight; we don’t mention you are sad again or that i am becoming a skeleton.  your teeth are serrated, sweet against my neck.  your hips are songbirds, dipping into my belly, begging with a lust i can’t feel anymore.  your body is heavy & all i want is sleep, the sweetness of a pillow beneath my icy cheek, the passage of time without the constant obsession over infinite sins.  i never promised you a rose garden, so welcome in the monster.