“who birthed the seas?”

it was snowing,
but it fell upon us warm and scattered,
like ash,
like dust,

i turned my head,
and watched you speak.


“sometimes i wonder who cradled her when she was just a puddle,
who nourished her to grow this big.”

i felt as if seas could grow in me.

“stay”
i begged,
“this city is so empty,
even with all these waves at its back.

and,

and stay,
for me,
because these feet don't know the route back.”

you whispered back, eyes shut,

“i want to know this body's delicacy.
how light would it need to be to sink?”




“micka, please.”




“micka?”


“and when do we ever find the time,
that is what i truly wonder,
time to search the sea,
time to fill our empty stomachs with its insides?

everything is just so rapid,
i feel like i can't breathe.”

i krept closer, the tide rising and falling like a set of lungs.

“stay,”
i said again,
watching while your hands grazed gentle waters,
searching for depth.

you hummed,
looked over and pressed a wet palm against my face.

the sea was a silent wash of stillness beside us.
your breath was loud against my cheek,

be comfortable, darling
I’ll be here awhile.

Jim died last night, slipped away like the slimmest embers of light that, from time to time, would reach their arms through the clouds to show themselves. I wonder where he is glowing, if he kindled his spirit to the stars, the gray moon, the forever burning sun.

I stared into his empty room last night, the air a silent breath synced with mine, and it felt so unexpected, it felt wrong and cruel and hostile. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

When I walked home the next morning, I felt like my lips had meant to mutter some form of plea into that void space that were all cradled together by a wrinkled blanket we had not yet washed.

I left the newspaper out for him.

8 a.m shrieking birds and gravel crunching underneath my worn shoes. The morning tan wasted down to the fragmented hairs of fog that settled their bodies over the ******* of earth and I kept my eyes shut to refuse to let loose something I felt I had no control over.

At 9:30, I crawled into bed, thinking of where the sun was at his placing now, thinking of the hiding stars, the seemed to be gone, moon, and I prayed that Jim had made it to the other side.

;fear

We felt it, with our hands pressed tightly against our child-chests.
Boom
Boom
Boom.

It sounded nothing like a heartbeat,
But explosions being let off in the distance.
And it smelt nothing like fear,
It smelt like sweat and dried ***** caked onto torn pajama pants.

We grew to know the insides of our mouths,
with our soft gums clutched between our teeth -
We learned that our voices were safer kept stowed away there.

We picked at their hands like we picked at our scabs,
Because pulling off healing skin,
felt like pulling off a rooted burn,
And prying off desperate fingers from off our bones,
Meant prying off something that terrified us.

This was our strength;
This was our paralysis.

We felt it, with our ears pushed against the door,
Please
Please
Please

It sounded nothing like a pleading mother
But warm air, creeping through vents with a sudden force.
And it smelt nothing like fear,
It smelt of fresh blood, kissing the lips of a weeping woman.

We worshipped knives like they worshiped our baby-soft skin,
Because cutting open ourselves meant cutting out what they left inside,
And watching the filth flee
down our wrists, down our knees,
Felt like draining water
Out of a clogged tub.


It felt nothing life fear
It smelt nothing like decay
It was a continual clutch of the knife against their throats

This one's for you, daddy

Sometimes i think i am incapable of caring about anyone. Like, all that i am, is constructed of guilt and emotions i never wished to be mine in the first place.

There will never be a part of me i would offer up to be handled, because every limb, every *****, every slab of flesh worth holding, has been grabbed too hard and forced into positions that paralyzed me.

When i think of hands, i think of HIS hands and how they took, seized my fatless chest; like if he pulled hard enough and if he pinched to the point of blood, it would resemble the gutting of a fish and I would be pliant in his hold.

Hands don’t feel the same anymore, they don’t look the same. ‘Cause when I think of hands, i think of the print that was left behind and how it dyed parts of me a shade pink i had never before seen. I think of how i couldn’t breathe because of it, too scared to leave my room for days, and when I finally did, i tiptoed around him like i was on thin ice and he was the cold water underneath it.

I slept two hours last night, i’m okay with it. I was too scared to close my eyes, convinced that time would pass by without me in it. Woke up, didn’t brush my hair, just tied it back; ratted up knot things clinging to over-stretched hair ties.

And I can’t tell anymore, if these words are just emotions i’m trying to toss out so i wouldn’t have to feel them anymore, or if they are perhaps freed things - open to the page to understand myself better.
How will I ever know?

there is something so tragic about a blank face and a ***** mirror. about 3 a.m eyes and our own fingers, mapping the parts of us we hate. there is something so damaging about resurfacing old ideas while juggling target practice with the wooden box kept bundled under piles of wrinkled clothes, stowed away in our dressers like safes, holding sharp things we would never touch on other days.

how can one relearn the idea of sleep?

because melatonin only worked once and benzodiazepines only kept us asleep long enough to dream about the bad things we avoided falling asleep for.

3 a.m feels like dry eyes and grown-out nails, bitten down until brittle. 3 a.m feels like a bed we are too afraid to crawl into and our own eyes we are too afraid to stare at. 3 a.m feels like a cold, creaking tiled floor, muffled from our fragile steps we took over it.

3 a.m feels like fear and sounds like the repeated notion of grinding teeth instead destroyed skin.

i keep studying the stain on the ceiling as though it were a separate universe. I keep willing it to take me away. outside, it's raining, without leaving a sound or smell behind, just flooded window wells and a distant ringing in my ears.

& praying used to be words i sung inside my head as though they could sing me towards some kind of promised refuge, but they never offered me anything except more of what i was already left with -

fear, constant fear, that things don't change, they just reshape themselves into shadows, into 3 a.m night lights and closed mouths that never stopped trembling.

breakfast felt like sin, it burned on the way down, burned like how his hands used to burn, as they took a journey on a body i never gave permission for him to inhabit.

I had that dream again, where i am on the floor and he is smothering me, all of me, with his hands and his mouth and his ****, and I can feel the way his body is a persistent pressure and weight above mine. I have my mouth open wide but no sound will leave it & there are people right outside the door that would hear if i just open it and yell something but i can't and i am completely paralyzed by the fact.

sometimes i wish i could wake up screaming, just so i could have an excuse to scream, but i don't know how that would feel, i don’t even remember how to feel anymore. I still cry, but i think it's more so instinctive than it is, self defense, because after each 10 minutes to 2 hours, i don't feel any different. I just feel dull and detached. A floating lost thing in space, waiting for someone to discover it and see him,

see me.

feeling trapped is worse than feeling alive, and for so long i dreaded that simple, factual feeling, but now, this cornered, helpless feeling that is living on me, in me, like mold, feels worse than how i imagined death, how i imagined life, if it meant something..

I just want to feel like i could crawl out of this cave with the confidence i wouldn't fall into another one.

you probably didn't think it was a disaster
with the feeding tube stuffed down your nose,
but it's wednesday, december 27th
and i can't stop thinking about how you are choking on it.
I wanted to believe somehow, that you and your worsening body
would somehow sprout back to life
like the wilted rosemary plant in my kitchen i never stop watering
like maybe this disease you engineered from glass and food and measuring tapes
would remember what you were like before.

when you were a svelte image of a red sun,
tiptoeing through the hairs of broken tree branches
and i wanted to look through them to see you burning
because it made sense to me every time i had to close my eyes
that you were something of warmth and serenity and you were always there
and i was cold and hopeless, lying underneath you
begging for you, or something else to save me

and i still haven't apologized
about how i left you and your pile of dead skin
and how i didn’t even say goodbye
just wandered off, praying and expecting i’d get lost,
but i’ve either forgotten how
or i'm terrified my stutters won't form into words you could forgive.

I don't know which one is worse

I don't know if that's even the worst of it.

its wednesday, december 27th
and i'm thinking about how far you are from me.

and i’m still searching for you in the sky
but i can’t see anything past all the rain.