This is the funeral dress that was stapled into my shoulders
And crucified
On the huge hill cross, where clowns once emerged from cotton smog -
Where bricks smashed foreheads, and we fingerpainted the sidewalk with each other's unruly blood
Where the Summer sleeps off a failed suicide attempt
Two years ago you put a hole in my head
But this is not the hole in my head (present and aching)
This is the black funeral dress I stapled into my own shoulders
The one that was worn too many days too soon
We are all infinitely bound between her death and a single desire for a boy with destructive ghosts living beneath his fingernails

I keep telling strangers about the way your jaw shakes after midnight
I keep telling strangers about the night I scattered glass shards in between my box spring mattress and the trundle bed
I keep telling strangers about your porcelain knuckles - the way you kiss each one individually before punching me in the throat
There's a rage inside my head
Disease spreads like forrest fire and floral secrets
Dead girls dance in October, rest in November
Goodnight

There is a place
where thoughts are left for dead
Unseen, unheard
Unwritten, and unsaid
A dark place deep
In the dismal abyss of the head
Where the cold bites sharply
And shadows scream
with voices so high
They cannot be heard
except for above,
only in the sky.
I have a castle there,
I built a palace out of words
And underneath,
below the dungeons filled with traitorous thoughts
Under the bellies of my demons
There is a place
where thoughts are left for dead
Unseen, unheard,
Unwritten, and unsaid.

1263

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Travers may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll—
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.