she has wound
mental stitches through
her oesophagus so her bones call
to her skin,
reel it in. ten million krill
trapped in the suction
of the line of a fisherman.

in art lessons, glue stuck to fingers,
a double skin sunken into
the contours of their tips.
it felt like touching somebody else's thumb,
an imposter branching from my palm

each time you left, I coated
my ribcage in PVA. There's
a gap now, between my chest
and my mouth

I'm searching for the edge, to peel
back the film
strand by strand &
shed my snake skin

gargling laughter pours
through hands and
cloaks fingers in slippery
oil
so they slide helplessly
around the pencil
like a fly creeping up a
car window only
to thud back to the leather,
but

lexicons bloom
like cancerous lilies  
when the gentle flicks
of the black letters kick
a barbed ball into your
lungs.

conversing in loops,
you seem content.
they burnt
down your home, I kept a bag
of the special things next to
the door for a time.
Now you live under a centipede's
back, an exoskeleton of notched
houses, with the wrinklies.
your nails
are crinkled like a soil bed ready
for seeds, they lived in water like
soggy tissues, when you were a nurse.
you keep falling now
but they can't pick you up,
like you used to, them.

She made a cake
beat with memories, sickly
sweet buttery kisses
and stuffed it into his half
open lips. he stayed frozen,
a plastic figurine
allowed her to smear
coconut icing into his eyes
and pipe a clown smile
into his waxen cheeks.

she covered
the moulded walls in
their stale photographs
recurring  coal eyes
hiding the red
that flashed inside like
a beacon on an emergency
                                 vehicle
his clones all stared at him
willed him to do something
but he sat, numb to her
numb to himself
and decided to go mad.

when the doll's hair
became so tangled a
wild toothed comb could
not soothe it,
I took the big scissors
in wild frustration
from the drawer in the kitchen
and hacked away at
Lucy's hair like a drunken
maniac.
her duck-speckled
printed eyes
closed their mechanical
lids each jolted snip
and a soft tick ticked
as coarse lashes hit
**** plastic
the more
that fell in chalk white chunks
from one side the more
I extracted from the other
like a wonky scale
until the spilt strands
covering the floor
tumbled tears down my  
fleshed pink cheeks
and I ran away to hide
under the duvet.

rocking the metal pan
side to side, agitate
the sand so swirling
  water
lets gravity push the
worthless sediment
over the edges into the
pool

gravel-dust gathers
momentum
swarming in a circular current
allowing the golden
nuggets to sink to the
base

fingers as feet through
quicksand
explore the grey salt-swamp
cold makes them slow and dumb
soft skin complains as grains
scratch skin a thousand times
toy fingernails clawing


catch a lump, hold it
between
thumb and finger, bulge with
fulfilment as your gobbet
glints beneath its caked mud
set the pan upon rocks
clasping tightly, pull the
stone through the pool,
freeing
it from the clinging dust
  
release it from the depths
of the crocodile water
and the ugly mound of
chalky mud submerged will
be caterpillar to
butterfly, a solid
gold nugget lying fat
on the face of your
soggy outstretched palm.