when i was ten my sister tried to drown me because
she wanted to cleanse me of my sins. they said she was
schizophrenic but
i think she was right

when you died
i turned to him and
then i realised he
wasn’t there
either

morphine. i found ashes in the pages of the photo albums under
my bed yesterday, leaves turned red pages to the colder chapters
and i thought you could still grow a rose this time of year but then i
remembered when we used to make flower crowns in sixth grade so
i took some morphine;
it helped with the pain

the night is younger than ourselves and we run through breakspears road shattering the lampposts with our bare hands, yes we are the new generation! everybody knows we aren’t scared of losing the pieces in our own, we just want to see the skin pulled off the tips of our fingers! (when you’ve been feeling the blunt edges of scalpels and needles all your life walking on glass starts to feel like heaven)

codeine— hell is getting hotter! she took to the clouds and the glass
shards wrote crimson sonnets on the bottoms of her feet, marietta i
trusted you i really did, i made you promise
that you’d stay; not with me, of course
(some things are more important in the end)
i wanted you to stay here.
but you wanted to see the stars so
i choke down the cough syrup;
one ache distracts me from the other

dear marietta,
the light distorts so strangely here in the water.
this is how i want to leave this place

the funeral was
in his bathtub. a single
guest and he wore red

leaves roll in my parents’ yard
another day watching your
photos from london develop
red leaves and plain drawings
litter your apartment floor

a repeated phrase
pitiful and rich
broken glass
casting rainbows on the porch
a cigarette burn
on the left hand from the right

your love sits uncomfortably in my gut

knocking on hell's gate—
heaven isn't open on sundays

cold skin; feet underwater, turned
inward and i fall forward. cold feet, cold
feet and blue skin, straight lines and
blurry vision, clear skin
red water

(inertia is a property of
matter;

why did i fall towards you?)

i think i saw god today, i saw god today and
his eyes stuck to me the way the telephone lines
stick to the sky, i gouged them out
and hung the pieces to dry
on heaven’s door, his blood
was all over me, i wish the
look in his eyes was as
warm as his veins, i asked for
forgiveness, you promised me
forgiveness but your pulse counted
my sins—

i thought believing in you was all i had
to do but there’s a whole book about you.
verses after verses, my mother killed
me because i burned the pages, and now
there is only the cover left with the
seams undone

heaven was a bit cold anyway