Dead skin and dirt under crescent shaped keratin claws
I'll take a shower- fix the problem, but
Sin isn’t grime, and pain isn’t filth
and the lines on my arms
aren’t a map
directing you anywhere
but you’ll trace them from my wrists to my eyes and you’ll
wonder

Pink eyed words whisper slow.

Lazy layers of smoke curl around her expositions--
marbled collarbones protruding from the recluse
of a crippled child called

Hot ash sprinkled across her duvet,
she feels too heavy
under the dark velvet of the night sky.

Fingertips trace stories across wrists,
catching the rivets of her imperfections with
bitten down nails.

Her eyes reminded me of Sunday afternoons,
Licked fingers turned to ash--
compelled to a numb and bleeding madness where
the presence of any tangible future was smoothed into
a small pebble held in the palm of her hand.

The way you walk reminds me
of how I lost my front teeth,
on that playground, under those monkeybars,
where I “had my first kiss"
but didn’t
and said I did, because
I was six and I was afraid of
being alone

Innocent saucer eyes open wide,
Sweet budding lavender laughter.
We’ll all go down-
One by one.
Silence aggravates the wreckage
Of what I used to be.
Into an abyss of false love
I’m falling.
A love that is mistaken,
Shown in the form of tender kisses
In detested secret places-
On a moldy couch
Covered in cat hair.
The crippling angst of your fingertips
Against my cold youthful cheeks-
Tracing the outline of my fatty jaw.
Slow circles of smoke escape your chapped crusting lips,
As chunks of flesh turn to rotting hostility
Against ones own body-
The bitterness of the cold turns to sweet comfort
As a lovely numbness becomes my regularity,
And emotions and physicality become one
Persisting to disintegrate-
my soul has become
a boiling bubble of spoiled milk
With the putrid stench of pillaged skin-
The devastating devouring desecration
of a ravaged--

I forgot how to hope
When I was four years old
On the cold cracked concrete floor
Of her basement kitchen down the block
Where we used to sit and laugh
About absolutely nothing
Then nothing turned into something
And laughter turned into an exertion of fear
A fear that lasted- that still prevails
And even through the good
It seems entirely possible
*That life on earth itself is hostile