I picked up the shards on the kitchen floor so quickly and
vacuumed the last remains glinting
at me from the hardwood so swiftly like if I worked fast enough I
might make negative time, like maybe when I finish my eyes might not even see the crash, I won't remember there are no longer
8 glasses in the cabinet I'll forget the feeling of my

shoulder knocking into the dooframe reflex-opening my
right hand like an arcade claw machine I could
almost grab it suspended midair like locking
eyes not breathing like catching

you like a butterfly like a
song I loved so sorely I wanted it to resonate my skull like a
giant hollowed tuning fork, knocking on your
dorm room door just to smell the smell of your things your navy
bedsheets your hair wax your striped socks your towels, lying
with you on beanbags, hearing my
heartbeat in my ears feeling it hot in my temples and pretending I
didn't

like when you left if I could
dismiss your magnetism pulling me as if I were a
violinist awash in floodlights on wooden concert stages beading sweat on my forehead from the gorgeous aching
weight of a symphony -- if I called it ordinary,
called it
gravity instead and I

split this universe in half spilling blood in the quantum reaction
and grew 6 years older and emotionally not at all,
if I got
undressed for everyone but you and sit alone in cars and
control rooms and office chairs and volleyball courts and
couches in an apartment I pay for, feeling nothing,
I won't
remember the shards like constellations on the floor and that now there are
7 glasses in the cabinet

how will I ever forget now that there are 7 glasses in the cabinet
there are 7 glasses in the cabinet
there used to be 8 and now there are
7 glasses in the
cabinet
    I turned off the light in the bathroom and my
elbow hit the doorframe and I can
   see it in the air
my
elbow hit the doorframe and the muscles in my fingers released like an arcade claw machine I can
   see it in the air
7 glasses in the cabinet
I thought about the hardwood and pictured
in the air I pictured that it might bounce off the hardwood I can
   see it in the air on the
hardwood bouncing off the hardwood in
thousands of pieces like a messy kind of crash

so
fast I could almost just
   see it in the air again just
pick it up from bouncing off the hardwood almost
like it didn't happen like there are still 8
glasses in the cabinet and maybe if I
blink again instead of thousands of shards on the kitchen floor
there will be
8 glasses in the cabinet

and I am a little girl at the dining room table again, with warm light
listening to locusts through the window, sitting
wide-eyed, swallowed up in a chair for hours while my father told
stories that would make his work friends erupt in their
bellowing alto-toned laughter and rattle the china in our tiny cabinets,
piecing together jargon and proud that my mother would let me
sit in the conference room instead of
bussing the table and washing dishes with the women so I

grew up sharpening my jawline with metal files and
tucking clay into the concavities above my hips, willing
it to harden into a squared angular body like a brick wall, like
a body for a suit and a stainless steel-linked watch for the left wrist who sat at the heads of dining room tables,

and with lungs full of spite and longing I cut my hair and
learned to explain actuator mechanisms and chemical rocket propulsion and sit in conference rooms in my scuffed-up steel-toed boots with
folded arms and witty curses about process control that make everyone laugh and I
can't help but notice how much more delicate my fingers are than everyone in the room and wonder whether my bone structure might have
negative safety margins for the functions I am
attempting by being there, but I find that it's

too late to cry for someone to touch your waist and kiss
your cheekbones whispering that you look like Aphrodite with your flowing hair and fill you with what you need because

what "woman" is left of one who casted her womb full of
cement to prove that she is man enough to sit at the table?

smiling you keep me in soundproofed closets and you
know that where you left me is exactly where
you'll find me again tomorrow night because I'm
still on my knees with my face in your ***** laundry inhaling you like a drug,
feral and half-dressed, having
draped every bedsheet I could
tear down from your shelves over the mirror, and
when you

come back I'll have scratched out every divine marking on my
body so you can grip my legs in the crooks of your elbows without guilt-- (you wouldn't even
need that, would you, but I'll have
done it anyway) and I'll
close my eyes and ***** your words into my
eardrums diluting my cranial fluid with animal pleasure blackening
the whites of my eyes and turning my extremities gangrene until
all I feel is your tongue, and

early Sunday morning you'll leave me crumpled, not
breathing, in puddles
on the hardwood, close the
door and
slip quietly into
bed with your wife, and, yes, it's wrong but you're
depraved, spoken like an exoneration because you’re already
******* the judge, and she’ll be
on her knees on Monday like an addict,
tying your underwear into a noose

hearing the soft nasal tin of my own voice in the midst of my
brake-light red-glowing drive home, my manic
late-night spiritual rebellion fueled by
electro-pop synth beats driving blood and youth into the flesh I
can't escape I can't
find "eternal" written on this body if I
close my eyes tightly enough-- singing along she still sounds

innocent

I don't recognize the thing up to its neck in
rocket fuel walking through the same three
doors every day on legs slowly burning up into exhaust, dredging itself through routine collecting time like a commodity, like a felon doing penance nor do I

recognize the beautiful thing feigning blissful ignorance, abusing itself, beating on drums with the heads of her violins,
wooden scrolls splintering over snares, she is
the brightest thing I've ever seen mutilate her stradivarius,
terrified by the gift she never asked for, preferring
to pump fists and sing in the dark but I
can't escape I can't
break myself into pieces small enough to become oblivious-- my

voice while singing with the devil still sounds like a gift from God

all this time it never mattered how sensitive the ridges
in my fingertips are to metallic surface finish,
inspecting the cold aluminum like braille for defects,
how fluent I am in composite porosity repairs, how many
material allowable properties I can rattle off the top
of my head, because I

used to sing the Oh Hellos with you in the basement,
thinking that the air in my lungs would fill the space with much less exertion once I
could watch a rocket engine hot fire with boots on the ground in the
slimy large intestine of july in some remote part of texas,
and at 17 I never imagined that rumble to be like a cataclysm, it is
glorious but somehow at 17 I

pictured 23 to be happier than sitting on a dorm bed next to you illuminated by star-shaped string lights on the walls,
or maybe just less painful than watching your face
change shape from halfway across the country, wondering how different
your voice would sound singing the bridge, and
afraid that my voice will never sound any different than it used to

I have neither raincoats nor kneepads,
no snowboots or hands for fighting--
they have torn and twisted my limbs, Lord,
the body you crafted from the glittering fabrics of light and time is
guilty and violated and battleworn, rightfully convicted of her own destruction--

I come to you sickly and pale and polluted, having
pumped my own bloodstream full of acid and toxins, I have even been fighting poison with poison thinking I’d found the antidote thousands of times--

I come to you with nothing in my pockets and
nothing in my heart but shapeless ashen remnants of things I set aflame in worship, now spent and burnt up in the fireplace leaving it
cold--

I come to you like a torrent,
whirling like mad having ripped through acres and acres
of manmade pleasures, through distractions and aspartame and
sleep aids, through souls-- those that are yours, God-- I have torn recklessly into other bodies and souls of your making, leaving everything decimated--

I come to you like a wild animal,
injured, weak, and frightened, with no recourse,
there is nothing that will save me
there is no one that will even see me in the dark
I have never been loved the way you love
I have never been pursued the way you chase after me
I have never conceived of any breed of comfort--

I come to you, God,
a puddle of mud at your feet, God,
afraid to speak your name because
it is the only thing I have left,
unable to even utter the word daughter,
and undeserving I will let you feed me and clothe me,
clean and bandage up my skinned knees,
carry me, God,
walk with me, Father