The art is hiding behind one pretence or another, for surely it cannot be both of these? Hidden things cannot stay hidden, for found is where beauty is. Hate. The incessant whining of an ache behind my ear, and it is like the wind whistling between glass at an ungodly hour. Like smoke between teeth. The world does not obey your thoughts, does not listen to my wishes. So tell me your name, at least one time, tell me your name so that I may place it in my mind in a place where it can live and dance and rot and forever remain, and let me say, I love you.  Love doesn't exist. It is the chemicals that are held in the heavy weight of your tears.

Later I am going to extract a tooth on camera to show mind over matter. I am a dentist, although it has taken two months of work to pull one tooth. It is an art. A rotten and infected art

pale sickness
you're white as a sheet

draining illness
your clammy white skin
rots

deathly light
the diseased white sun will bleach your bones
after the doves pick them clean

sickly white
your cracked teeth clatter out of your skull
dominos in a dead white jar


trembling hands the color of spoiling milk
carefully cradle an almost translucent infant
mother and child
both far too weak to feed

the only thing that grows here is decay
white mold thrives on your hoarded white bread
while outside the safety of the white picket fence
there is not a single soul who does not
recognize the white of an unburied skeleton
under a full moon

bile splatters the wall
dreadful peace fills my veins at once
it’s all going to be okay
the worst of this is tooth decay
i can’t rely on others to know better

how can something so disgusting feel this pure
why does this burn in my throat bring me closer to perfection
tears feel valid only when they’re forced
it all feels so wrong
but i can’t let go of this control
peace can’t stay here anymore

but don’t leave me like everyone else has
i’ve given up on everything
i can’t face the world without you
tears shed just for you to stay
please lie in this filth next to me
don’t flee like the rest
there’s no other way i can cope today

the mirror leaves me unrecognizable
the reflection is a lie
you can’t let this happen
here to destroy me
the progress we’ve made
i can’t become an embarrassment once again
i brought you here to take on some of this grief

lonely times in the bathroom
the tile still feels so cold
warmth you gave feels like daggers in my stomach
like bugs trying to escape
i didn’t eat the food
it’s eating away at me

where were you when the tree branches
were scraping against my window
when i was staring at the cul-de-sac
clutching the landline to my chest
one time i thought i saw a bear
in the woods across from the bus stop
but it turned out to be a pile of brush
you know i still see things in the dark
the other night i woke up from a bad dream
and saw teeth that weren’t there
i managed to blink them away but
there are some things that i can’t
like the shadow in the doorway that visits
every night and the open hand i am doing
everything not to grab
it pretends that it needs me but really
all i needed was yours