once again,
curved fists and clenched eyebrows and your words are venom in my mouth
MY LIPS ARE BLEEDING, BROKEN THAT I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP
little baby, little boy curled up in your accusations
he reaches a single finger, gnarled and unsure
your violence and insults and broken hands are turning him from boy to
m o n s t e r.

"you're the only one who understands me"
watch as my heart crumbles and falls into the ocean  in every single
way i've ever wanted to save you

i'm sorry
the telescope lens is still cloudy
i have to cut my knees and crawl back through the ******* dungeon
find my way through the bramble and glass and barbed wire
I'M TIRED OF GOING BACK GOING BACK GOING BACK
i want the safety
of the muted nest and momma's lemon tree
i promise
i won't eat all the broccoli
if you'll let me come home.

On the floor of the river styx, frogs burrowing peer over muck duvets to watch me press like a violet between the cookbook pages of the water and the land. I went overboard-

I am addicted to the darkness between worlds.

Somewhere above me, I see the moon. She doesn’t try to warn me, she doesn’t bother reminding me that I can’t breathe. Heavy currents like snakes blur her face into fractured crystal tears that wash me over with sweet exasperation.

Sedated by the salt toward the other side, where the ferryman flips my coin and hums a tune without words about all rivers rushing toward the sea.

He doesn’t ask me why I chose this route, just grins a toothless grin
And winks
And tosses my coin into the water
without

So much

As a wish.

last night i had a nightmare

your car backed up to and through my front door
dumping broken computers and monitors and machines in my yard
dumping out your trash at my mother's doorstep
like you did to me
(you tell them i left, but we both know your cold eyes pushed me)

last night i had a nightmare

i walked into my darkened room and a man fraught with danger and uneasiness left his breakfast dishes on my bedspread.
my mother did not hear my screams of concern, as to why, why a man of such disgust had chosen my bedroom to have his breakfast eggs.
the ketchup and stray pepper he left on my pillow was a violation like hands between clenched thighs

when i woke up this morning,
i wanted to cry.

my (enter degree here) doctor slipped me slight pills of green and brown, guaranteed to rid me of these visions, these haunts that grip me like dramas played out in technicolor across my eyelids.

now i take two under the tongue, caught between a lover's fingertips.

i wake up having lost and died only moments before.

she, a willow wisp gone sour in the sunlight.
she, they said, a wide-eyed one time choking laugh
she, a too-bright moon with craters only calloused hands could read
she, they said
she bit her tongue with their teeth wrapped around her like spikes
she.

here I am to tell you that I am not she, I am not your word or prayer or curse. I will no longer let you confine to the the lower-case, huddled down, back room existence of she.

I am I, Me, Woman.

I am.

last call,
she wrote, with her fingertips still tangled in the wire wrapped around her faulty heart.

each breath laced with shards of glass, an aching pull that was simple in the darkened sheets and quiet. an answer that seemed too simple because there was no question.

i'm dying,
she cried as her hands slipped on the tear-slicked phone that couldn't quite convey the way that she was trying to be so, so brave with each labored breath.

there were no words in the screams that pounded off the yellowing linoleum.
a desperate, hoarse cry pleading that she needed someone on the other end of the static to wipe the sweat off of her brow and call an ambulance.

when are you coming home?
little bouncing ponytail of four is grasping fingers and trying to fix injuries with whole-wheat goldfish. her pink salt-scuffed snow boots are breaking hearts down the hall.

and i'm here again. once cheery monkey slippers worn through the toes shuffle down hallways lined with trepidation and antiseptic. this isn't old-fashioned, white-apron clad matrons grasping hands and adjusting crisp peaked hats. medicine is doled out in plastic sheets like candy, accompanied by bent knees and scanned bracelets.

privacy concerns, signed waivers, no liabilities. hospitals are less for healing and more holding cells, storage lockers, fraught with too-thorough questionnaires and grasped pens like swords defending trustee boards from lawsuits.

my mornings are finger ****** and sunlight that seems empty without those sweet trills and a whipping reach of wind. stagnant air, the faint smell of ***** hiding under regulation bleach wipes. this is what i wake up to. soft chimes aren't rousing, nor soft, at eight am lulled through too-new loudspeakers.

the ***** mint green trays never lose that sickly smell of rotten food like the undergrowth of a fallen tree. the only coping skills i've mastered this far are how to effectively channel all my breathing solely through my mouth. hospitals never lose that smell, the ache of death and sorrow that clings to the floorboards and plays cards under the bed, waiting for its turn to reach corners much further than the cleaning crew can.

eyes draw to the torn edge of my sweater, revealing the milky white skin that lost it's sweetness. i've been ravaged by needles and rubber tubes and electrode pads full of gel that shouldn't sting, but does. i spent fourteen hours climbing the walls of my subconscious while gloved hands made adjustments flanked by heavy shoulders and eyes that seemed to never shed their bitter tears.

fourteen hours, i spent with my id. it passes in jumbled snippets of emotion that are still lost in that haze.

i was a creature,
without reason,
or cause.