You stroke my hair
Whilst I smooth the flesh
                          That without muscle hangs

Outside the clouds
Turn into a landscape
Obscured by haze
                                    In that blissful second
I forget the fading time allotted to us
And the reality
Of both our consequences

My shoulders relax,
my muscles lighten
as I let go of a load
and say goodbye to the guilt
that had been crumbling inside;
I breath out
and feel the relief
burn down my throat.

In a year I’ll be so light I’ll reach the stars.

You have a circle,
of love declared.
Then comes a triangle
and 2 becomes three.
Worse is the square,
as its four be-known,
I don't fight if you won't.
If I'm nothing to your eyes,
then voices tell me to depart.
I'm way too tired.
to offer my plea.

The doctor doesn't feel sorry,
and I admit neither do I.
I'm taking up a bed
for torturous threads,
and I'm trying to die,
while those in waiting
feel so much hurting.
He tells me of my liver,
News I wanted him to deliver,
This world is black and dead.
I will refuse another liver,
and my grief has not been said.
As I create and lay in my bed,
This world is purple poison
and my blades are still pouring
with enemies I have long bled.
But no joy or such happiness.
It makes me sick of who I became,
And the sickness has ruined my name,
and madness created my wicked game.

(we  
              cradle—limbless—hungerly in violet  
           half-snow)
    barnacled to a ribcage of someone’s leftover   //god–  
my brother’s eyes        were spoonfuls of thistle  
    and so  
         he gave them

                          (    to mother  
               in a bell jar  
                         packed with apples that never rot)  
          

i said—dear—"shall we rot together?"  
he said  
               no  
but held my tail tighter than  
        the census did the mute  

            when they told us  
the white-ones  
       could out-breed  
       guilt  
       (our teeth were ripped  
         not sharpened)

       [oh darling look!] the moon  
ate itself out of order,  
  its halves spitting  
  bloodless milk on  
     sterilized clover  

—           the doctors wore hands like corkscrews  
               & unbirthed  
             any child that could  
            dream backwards—

       (i remembered)  
             chewing on a pipe-cleaner name  
        while a man with a cage of bees  
                instead of a face  
                        taught me the word for  
             acceptable.  

——

       there are songs that only come  
         when your tail’s caught  
in a trap meant for  
        your cousin’s ghost  
            (he cried into me  
               like a buckshot lullaby)  

and so i  
      curl.  
    (last ***** first).  
             hide my eyes  
                  in the cracks between

     <<he loved me with a scalpel made of lightning>>  
     <<i loved him with the parts they said to  
                            unsee>>  

and (       hush hush now       )  
              the roots are crawling into me—  
                       gentle, dumb  
                                 unchosen—

i  
       am  
           not  
              the mistake  
                       i was taught to  
                            worship.

Charon's ferry taunts me with hope
My neck is raw from the rubbing rope
In the river Styx no one can float
I am not a thing to try and save
Let me bathe deeper in this path I paved.

Stuck this way

- its no great loss-
denial is my albatross.

No circles of hell here to cross
just that desire to no longer drown:
Perdition only pulls you down.

Hell is silent and reserved
The only demons you hear
are the ones you bring.

We used to laugh and sing.

Your love was structured
like a Shakespearian sonnet.
I always knew what to expect,
still i found it so beautiful.

I never meant what I did to you.
It is your voice im slipping further into.

and It serves me well.
You used to say my vices would be the end of me.
Late night.
Me driving drunk.
Car crash.        Stole you away.
Now I see the irony.

Hung myself to settle that debt;
the universe thought differently.

So still I drown.
What am i searching for?
What would I do if I even found you down here?
This rope around my neck makes it clear:
Hell not only remembers,
it doesn't forgive.

Yet... this is no way to forever live.
I wonder whether... the thing that damns me
could be used to redeem?

I pull and pull at the rope and it seems

-Its fastened to Charon's boat.
Aboard i wrestle with the noose.
So I see, it'll never come loose.
It is a fight I can not yet win:
It is meant-for now- to press against my skin.

Hell holds a grudge.
Hell is a reminder.
I hope i never find her,

                              Again.

I hear her yell as we reach shore:

" do you not... need me anymore?"

I wave goodbye to Charon.
Tighten the noose around my neck.
For the first time, to her I
          
                  do not respond.

I do.

I can not forgive myself,

                    
                 but I need to move on.

-

I'm sorry, mum
That you went through all that pain
To bring me into life
For me to just waste away
And wish I wasn't alive

because others could not have it
Guilt taught me I could not watch videos of people ******* because ******* was a sin
And that my body was sacred so only a man I loved
and was married to could touch it

For as long as I remember
He was there, smiling

When I was seven,
My mother told me I was born a sinner
And guilt was just the desire to be forgiven from this natural condition
So every time my body pressed against a pillow
Rhythmically
In my grandmother’s room
With no one
but the sight of Guilt judging me with His piercing eyes —
I did not question it

I was a sinner
Simply for loving my own body

Pasayloa ko… pasayloa mi sa among mga sala, my mother chanted in every prayer —

I repeated it, obeyed it, until I came to believe it

So when I stopped believing
When I knew I stopped believing
He was there, patiently
Bidding me to come back

Even as I rode through bliss
Rhythmically
Hair pulled back, the bed damp
Used condoms at the side
Breathlessly eating and being eaten out by
this man I just met

His piercing eyes, unflinching stare
****** me harder than anyone ever did

Guilt was my religion —
And I was His prodigal child