all these years of living outside the city
have turned my heart
rural –

outside of me – the only things
that i can acknowledge
exist separate from who i am and what i feel –

cicadas rub their arteries together, too small not to touch
intimate parts
when laying so close.

they found me
in the midst of my drowning life

and i listen,
they reenact my ***. it's okay, please don't disassociate
because of me

if it keeps you from feeling empty, get full –
swallow the details
even if
it means i'll forget them – i am

far away
from everyone. isolated, weeds like a noose, i ruin
myself first

because i remember far too much.  i
am alone too much

i have nowhere but myself to put the hurtful things.

now afraid –
my heartbeat is the rhythm of
bugs
running from the sole of a pretty shoe. i am

wanting to scream i'm sick i'm sick i'm sick
but only the trees
will hear me –  hold me. i'm sick

and for once
i can't ***** it out. can't bleed it out.

He asked
how I felt after losing my virginity
and

I just needed to know
if god will bury us in the sky
after the ground
is full

I hate myself so I won't hate you. The feelings
swell in me like
parasites or a pregnancy –

think of my dead fetus,
a clump of cells
decomposing. My skin is colorless, it died  
before the rest of me

(or him or her or they).

You
have been the lump in my throat for years, I taste
*** and blood and tears
and I *** and bleed and cry
for myself, as if you would not want it.

I already know what you would say – we are
under the same sky
so you will

always be a part of me
whether I want you to be or not.

I hurt myself so it feels natural when you do it
and finally I have the courage

to hope that when
we touch, it breaks me enough to draw
glass from my fingertips
and carve holes in you, too. (I spread
myself open and it was never enough for you).

Pretend you do not put opals in tiny glass jars
and **** their color,
they form their own town of
cracked stones
looking like lightning. I saw you boil and
bleed the air to create thunder
I heard
my thighs slap together
when you were inside me, the humidity between them
created storms –
nothing is ever fine around you.

I have an open heart, closed sleeve

it is enough
to feel so much
without
having to show anything.

His eyes yawned
from watching me suffer too often

and
I learned to

be less exhausting.

I am writing notes to ghosts
and realizing
that there are some bad habits I will always go
back to.

The morning has opened its eyes
through sea salt
from
the Sandman in
an abandoned bedroom

tides
swim through our curtains
wrinkles
its white skin

I am
next to the ocean.

I do not belong to myself, nor
the shadows –
I have donated all of my years to men
until they are old enough
to be gods

and how I have fallen on my knees
as they grew to be
too old for me

the earth never is. I don't love
it enough, still

nothing aches more like trying to be better
when dirt forms crescents
like a moon
beneath your fingernails.