(you tell me that happiness exists
and I beg you to allow me
a few moments, to dissolve
those smiles plastered on that
family portrait you hang so proudly)

Exhibit A:
a medecine cabinet full of pills,
and a woman whose throat is a bit too loose,
whose head is a bit too woozy,
from trying to erase those 10 odd years,
when her uncle knew the insides,
her legs better than he knew his wife’s,

Have you seen
the man who prays too hard,
for redemption at some backwoods’ altar,
begging God and all those who witness
for forgiveness of sins he has yet to commit ?
He has forgotten how to sleep,
pacing and chasing far too many a dream over a hill.

Find next,
in a girl whose body feels like space,
forever bending over her knees,
to pull that monumental trigger
lying at the back of her empty throat.
that boom-boom, flash of violent thrashing
and a quiet flushing of the toilet
She never could quite remove what felt so heavy

Turn your eyes up the stairs,
to a nervous women who runs
a scalding bath, hoping that
maybe if her skins burns hot enough,
then she’ll be washed of all that
hellish responsiblity, submerging
the animal circus in her that’ll
paint her tombstone peasant anti-ghost


allow me a moment to clarify:
not all that lies at the surface
speaks to the distance
a soul can travel through time,
allow me a moment to make
an exhibition of struggle
and remind you that
nothing is ever quite what it seems