is it you – too?

the scratch of skin

blood under nails,

fighting the phantoms

and scratched back in couplets

through flesh onto bone

words inside, words out


is it you, love?

who has me choking on verse

spat with toothpaste and blood

tucked into an unwatched glass

and drunk

until birdsong flows

fireflies -
alflame at dusk
we dead moths

waking
newly human
strange and soft;
pinpricks, feelings -
the crawlings around inside you
shiver as your skin becomes real

a nightlight for daytime sleeplessness
carry the seas inside yourself
like people:
walking barefoot
drinking sunstreams
and braving the dark red nights

hark, choir voices, still
slurring miss you discrepancies
howls in empty skies
wolves die

a misunderstanding of your insides
bones
more sand than rock
crumble at a press too hard

on this,
last day of your first life
hung on a boy’s fingers
the edge of a cliff
taste the water in your nerve endings dragging you home
you splinter,
and you rise -

when the bruise blooms, you shine

my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:

fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft

sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -

did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?

in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; *sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass

pull the clouds //  up over us // covered in soft // in gold-laced kisses // so when the sky // cracks open // we smile // falling in

Lips like bloodlines,
Carmilla kisses her mirror
and calls herself dangerous

Naming myself for dead things,
for ruinous things;
fire,
the ash that drank Pompei,
the ivy that made your walls cave,

Was Lady Macbeth sweeping her hair in braids
to nest her crown?
Or Nefertiti painted gold to reclaim God?

I’m asking for the lavender girls
See, we do these things to be holy
to be myths in our skin

Tying feathers to our shoulders
and glitter to our tongues,
thinking
I can be gold if I want to
I can be thorn-tipped ugly

In pink fur, black lace, we kiss the toes
of Courtney Love and Venus in one breath

Cut back
to my blood-laced lips on the mirror
as though saying Narcissus is my idol
my skin placed above heaven
and I wish to love myself so much
I’d choke for it

I am finally starting to understand winter nights for what they are:
sterility of a black sky, inner warmth that never quite touches skin, shivering on the side of the road after tequila and laughter have laid waste to four AM and it is only the traffic lights left to reflect you.

Maybe that's why we listen to the downbeats of summer, the slow songs made for rooftops but more devastating in the pitch dark of seven PM on a main road somewhere in the city, all alone and au revoir and sepia memories of honey-warm light leaking through the kitchen we used to share.

internal warmth and windchimes outside sing hellfire for the passing storm.

love that shadow
that dances over
your lips and bedroom walls
and your fingers
tangle with smoke
and mysteries
that he carves out
with killer’s hands
****** and almosts
setting alight
the fairybooks
and writing on your pages
needle-points in irises
blind in light
and brilliant in darkness
so you see
his brilliance
and resent yours

can’t stay,
run faster
- the wolves are catching
on the souls of your feet
and the mothers are crying
for the lovers
you leave
always leave
the bedclothes *****
and the faces blurry
singing Morrissey
blame humanity
for the hatred of everything you touch
and touches you
rainwater down a window
a shadow
still warm on your tongue
sweet boy
could be young
must be so much older

insubstantial you,
runaway i
*this
is
a
story
of

kiss me
(says he, maybe she)
cut up on the sharpness
of lips
and teeth

she is that thing -
about plastic flowers;
they never wilt on you
and stay young
and beautiful
as long as you care to see them

kiss me
like real people
do
when they touch
don’t quiver
or glimmer
just bruise like decayed fruit
and bleed as freely

and the flowers,
plastic flowers -
smelling just as sweet
with sprays of perfume
sweating
ugly juniper fragrance
dripping
down spines
like dew

**** me
she says, definitely she says
*******,
wide open eyes
to creep inside him
(or him, perhaps)
and she could
with her fingers
stop his breath
and she might
if the light
hits his eyes just right

burning flowers
smells worse when plastic
like explosives
like fat in a deep-fryer
crisping like
bodies in a burning house
- three bodies, two bodies, and a burning house

**** me
like a litany
**** me
like you promised me
**** me
in fields of plastic peonies
just
**** me*
and
you’ll love me
you’ll see

wrap your arms
around her waist
her face
soft in sleep
white sheets
around you both
- like something brief
might change

she ripped a hole in her socks every day, maybe just to feel the thorns and let her legs bleed / that kind of lovelyblindingfrightening thing that you want to run your fingers through, tug on her hair just to feel the resistance / you ask her what it means to be a constructed girl and she says ‘convict yourself of ****** and you’re halfway there’ / in the dirt, tearing out flowers like a lonely god in the universe - she’s bruised, and soft and waiting