i will hold a gun to my throat myself,
yet somehow,
it is less violent
than the casual words of a god.

mad girls don't cry wolf;
they die. they disappear,
like cobwebs in a darkened corner.
in the shadows, watch me dangle
with a slip knot of fuchsias.

in the shadows,
watch me dig this body up,
until there is a layer of skin
and black lips and lithium quartz
and clichéd promises
you haven't touched.
after all, archaeology is
just an excuse
to look straight at my remains.

in the shadows,
let my skin cave in;
i will take everything down —
every misery, every deception,
every corruption, and every light.
i will ***** out the ******* sun
if it kills me,
leaves me cold as bygone walls.


yet somehow,
it is less violent

than to be loved by a god, until he doesn't.
to be loved by a god, but it isn't.

to be loved by a god: a euphemism, at best

to be loved by a god
is the curse.

i am quiet as
an iridescent, swan paperweight,
sitting and melting on sadness —
on sheets and sheets of it.

maybe this entire time,
i have been on the edge,
lying like a sand angel
and wading through dead buttercups.
i write a premonition
and call it a poem.

if these walls could speak,
they would call me a resident.
an outsider.
a hostage victim.
a sorry sight.
a paperweight sitting
in the middle of misery.

i am quiet as
an iridescent, swan paperweight,
sitting and melting on sadness —
on sheets and sheets of it;
oh, how i long
to fall and break
into a thousand pieces —

one, just small enough
to be invisible
to slip away
and have
no trace of pervasive sadness —
it glistens in casual,
technicolored mockery.

and i am quiet —
oh, so quiet.

oh, how i long
to fall and break.

a sheer curtain caught in a crossfire,
i stand here,
pure,
still,
and burning tenderly —
burning softly before your eyes.

i liken myself
to a child's laughter falling
on patches of sunlight —
to persephone giving in
to the licking flames,

but she is no more than
a fading ghost,
and my skin —
no more than a haunted woodland.

i hold on to the flames,
to this perplexity:
how can immolation
look so soft,
so cleansing,
so **** hypnotic?

when it feels everything but.

a sheer curtain caught in a crossfire,
i stand here,
pure,
still,
burning tenderly
into oblivion —
just as softly before your eyes.

all the weight of the night sits on my shoulders,
like a ****** of crows pecking on a graying bruise —
i cave under; my entire skin —
it falls apart, in grace,
from the constant touch, like liquid mercury;
such an anomaly, such an irony,
such words mused, lying there in a trance-like state
under all the weight of the night.
i wish it takes with it my sorrows
the second it lifts itself.

yet, i remain.

soon, the dawn will creep and break, eventually,
from holding me up in vain.

such a pity

maybe i will break with it.

i.
pluck the aching out of my ribs — one by one
as though they were teeth that had sunk —
latched themselves onto these bones,
until it is but a pile of bite marks,
a pile of mildewed flowers —
festering like sins, like punishment.
pluck each bruising bone,
some things belong to my chest.
some, to firelight.

ii.
pluck a rib,
make the sweetest, purest, brand new woman —
all lace girdle and nectarine lips,
stepping out of the outskirts of my skin
as i watch from the other side of an exit wound — the inner side.
maybe in another life, that can be me.

thou shalt not covet.

i close the window.
i zip the skin.

iii.
tonight, i kneel in a confessional —
screaming away all banal sorrows,
screaming away all banal sins.

pull the aching out of my ribs —
it's in its rawest just before the dawn.
pull the aching out of my ribs.

a corrupted sight
for awakened flowers. ringing church bells. hummingbirds.
oh, a corrupted sight.
and mornings will hear its aftermath.

oh, to crawl my way inside,
to scoop dahlias out of my throat —
and find the dumping site for all the gods
that died in my hands —
to this there is no absolution.

to crawl my way inside
and find the veins that survived,
the veins that did not —
the veins
too late to be saved by prayers.

to crawl my way inside
this skin — this catastrophe:
all flesh and a pool of blood
and all the nights i didn't drown
and perhaps soon,
i'll finally get to my ribs,
part them with all the softness
that my cruel hands can muster
and stare at the quiet, incomprehensible aching.


as though the calm will remain
suspended in the air.


soon,
it will all fall away.

dig me a boneyard in a field of daffodils —
beneath their sunlit softness
and rustling leaves;
they aren't the first things
my body would ever taint.

i used to tremble as sunlight ran down my skin:
a crouching, wounded fawn
that knew no god —
and if there was, it would be of death.
i used to tremble as sunlight ran down my skin,
before dissolving into
a thousand foreign sorrows i cannot name.
now, sunlight just leaves a trail of smoke —
a forest fire beneath my feet
and no ashes to rise from.

now the rain just falls passively on the soil
but what good is petrichor
when it's your body that rots beneath the dust?

for out of it were you taken;
and unto it shall you return.

dig me a boneyard in a field of daffodils —
beneath their sunlit softness
and rustling leaves;
they aren't the first things
my body would ever taint.


dig me a boneyard and call it transgression.
i was not the first thing
i did ever taint.