the ghostly whisper of despair
lingers on ice-cold neck,
like lead, creeping,
like vines, crawling
like veins on quartz.

bash it. bash it.
bash it on my wrists.

lately, i try to write poetry but all that spills is violence;
i am a woman possessed. *******. all foul, sulfur scent.
this lace nightgown is weary from holding together
loose bones, loose skin, loose soul.

and the sunless sky has buried its dead,
all in bleeding, black mourning veil ensemble.
and i am gray — gray as a body drained of blood.

and with all these autumns i've spent bleeding, god,
have i not bled enough?

i carry around bones from a dug up grave. i hold onto the thorns of burial flowers. i trip on the words scattered from my own séance. pray tell, where do i lay these down to rest, if not inside me?

i seal them in the dark. i seal them shut.

i.
i always find a space for myself
in small places:

ii.
in my mother's open wounds,
there i dance with salt and lime
and my father's misplaced angers.

iii.
in the scratched frames
under the nails of an angry girl.
in between cowering sunbeams
i lick the walls clean of dust.

iv.
in the fifth page of thrifted book,
back when i was in love with bukowski,
i look at the stains of a summer day sin
and see a five-feet
egyptian sarcophagus taped with figures;
what is the hieroglyph for pity,
so that hathor takes me back to the tight spaces of her womb?
what is the hieroglyph for homelessness?
what is the hieroglyph for misplaced?

v.
i always find a space for myself
in small places:
in the holes of a tire,
in between discolored knuckles,
in desperate places where a body gives up
and wastes away;
there's a space for one more.

vi.
i always find a space for myself
in small places — they wait with such quiet patience
like a father to a prodigal child —
i always find a space for myself
waiting in small places,
it calls hauntingly, like a well-loved, familiar ghost.

yet i cannot come back.

i am too huge with sorrows now —
too full with wistful human bones.