my face is an open casket;
hear it recite obituaries and
watch the mourners cheer
and throw wild roses at my feet;
it's where the rot has started spreading —
like whispers. like applause.
rising, until my skin
resembles raw obsidians
until i am no more.

watch me hang from the ropes —
in hypnotic grace, like suspended light
flying, swaying.
a circus freak.
a certain state of decay.
watch me fall: a weightless,
motionless thing in the shadows.

a vigil.

yet the curtains fall
and mourners leave one by one —
their wrists, stamped with lilac ink.

a vigil.
a funeral.

a freak show and
its curtain call.

lay a cloth on this open casket.
i do not want to be seen anymore.

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.

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.