at first, the thunder cracks my eardrum.
the rain punches the soft ground after
being held back by the clouds for so long,
and I cannot see past the blanket of darkness.
as the storm rages on, the thunder roars,
but my body knows best like it always does.
my hands carefully craft a cup of strong tea,
and my body rests in front of the fireplace,
and the obnoxious thunder lowers its voice,
and the violent rain's touch becomes softer,
and I finally see the light peeking through.

i judged myself so harshly
burying deep memories within the archive
forcing myself to forget who I was
and focus on who I could be
but who I was is a fragment of who I am
diving in the archives of my mind
i forgave my younger self for the mistakes
for i was a child and faults are a given
i relieve my childhood from the catacombs of the past
and move forward together
hand in hand as a whole

my thought fibers
push past the clutter,
swirling around until
my brain twists into knots
and my heart follows suit,
its veins tangling like spider webs
until my feet get swept off the ground
and my body gets ****** into the black hole.

The thing with begging to be loved
is that there’s more love in the begging
than there is in the aftermath.
There’s more to be loved in a pathetic way
than ever in something genuine.

But we still do it. Admit it,
you’re not the exception. We drag
our hands across our bodies
and pluck them into something acceptable;
there comes a point where it’s not love,
but violence. But acknowledgement —

and **** it if they don’t feel the same.
We are all crying the way children cry
for attention. If I scrape my knee
on the thick tarmac, will I still have to walk
home alone?

The birds sing for food early in the morning.
If I were a mother, I would never
make my child beg for *****. If I were a mother,
I would rip myself apart six months in
to see if I was cooking up something that looked
like me.

Some bodies are made of worms,
soft, malleable, wet to the touch
with tears and a thin layer of grime,
built up over years of creaky limbs
oiled with their own disuse.

Some bodies are made of wasps,
and they are violent. The buzz
rings in the ears and they are the type
to throw drunken punches. Every
second is all that is.

Some bodies are made of earth,
in that they sustain others
and drain themselves. Global
warming will **** them off, but
for now, they shine.

Some bodies are made of other bodies,
like Frankenstein, like corpses
that aren’t quite done yet
with the worms and the wasps
and the ground that they clawed out of.

They were making Jesus into a marionette.
That’s why they nailed through his hands,
because the hands are attached to the arms,
and the arms the shoulders, and from there
you can pretty much control the whole body.

It’s too easy, far too on the nose
to pretend that God is the puppet master,
and I don’t want to give any credit
to the executioners. So, let’s say
that Jesus is both puppet and puppeteer:

right. You following me?
Hands are being manipulated by hands,
and I’m trying to get at something
beyond a religion I don’t believe in any more.
The ****** lamb is in his ****** chamber
and there’s something controlling all of this.

Unreality is the only thing
that can, for sure, be real. If we’re all
in a collective simulation,
made up amoebas floating around
in some brain hooked up to wires,
then why did we invent God?

There’s a treasure hidden deep within my bones,
and it seems like it’s the collective world’s job
to find it. To sink their hands so deep within
that my ribs crack apart and I am angel-spread.

And then they can take whatever they want
and call it ‘treasure’. And I can be left behind
and call it heartbreak, because then I’ll have something
to write poems about. Something to cry about
when I’m not really sad, I just want to be.

But if I am the forest, then I have many places to hide:
the gaps between my fingers, the way my stomach
folds over on itself. The mortifying ordeal
of knowing who I am can perhaps be my greatest ally.

So come, bring your maps and your backpacks
and all those things that TV taught you adventurers need;
come inside, I’ll put the stove on, let’s have some tea,
and you can warm your greedy hands
before they worm inside me.