im shaking a snow globe and all flakes are stuck to the bottom.
i can't make it snow inside.
the smiling statuettes are broken and there's a hairline crack that slashes across the glass.

it used to wind and play the lightest tinkling music
like a jewelry box my mom bought for me when she wanted me to be her girl.
that's all over now.
i think it got thrown in the trash years ago with my pink baby blanket and the arching ballerina doll.

i used to be someone's daughter.
i used to be a girl shook up in snow with music ringing in the background.
it's dead quiet now.

my thoughts are stuck to the bottom of my skull
and can't be shaken up and the music crank is jammed and my heart is a silent overture.

i don't want to be a girl
or a boy or a thing
with limbs.
and i don't want a girl or a boy
or a thing as fragile as those statuettes with fractured arms.

they're still smiling even though they aren't whole.
how do they hold their pose so completely?

ive never been much good at that so i just watch with admiration at the
art of the inanimate,

cracking a hairline smile that can't stir my eyes.

i don't think i can shake you any harder and i don't think i can unglue those tiny flakes. after all, that's the whole ******* point, isn't it?

what good is a snow globe that doesn't snow or a person that can't love or a daughter that isn't?

what good am i to anyone if i can't be whole or good or correct?
ive been playing at the art of the inanimate and
those eternal smiles and pointed ballerina toes.

i thought if i was quiet as a figurine--
i thought.
i thought.
i thought.

and I'm shaking
shaking
shaking

and nothing is coming unhinged.
there's no music.
the hairline crack has become
formidable.

I can't tell anyone still
because of the complications of
this grotesque girlhood and the *** that hangs suspended between us
so artificial and illuminated.
do you see it hanging there? or is it another thing
that can only be
and never act?

im getting better at this
art of the inanimate.
and this veneer of wholeness
and manufactured joy.

smooth down my body in poreless plastic and close all entryways to trespassers

and the womanhood that fast approaches can't find me and the selfish needs of limbs will be void
and the human desire to destroy everything it touches will be curbed
if just for a moment.

i want to destroy you with how much I want.
how much i want the snow to fall. how much I want to be baptized in the cold and kissed in a vacuum separate from the world.

our own dimension of mistakes and quiet
where both of us can practice the art of the inanimate
in peace.

i see you performing it too,
and your own hairline smile that cracks.

did you think i wouldn't notice?

i think the snow is coming loose.
i can feel it running down my cheeks.
and im smiling even though it feels wrong.

the thoughts are dusting over me and resting in my eyelashes.
i see them every time i blink.
she's gone and so is he and
there's more than i can count on all my fingers and toes
that have left.

my knuckles turn white.
my fingers tighten.
the world is glittering glass
that falls like the first snow.

Tricho-tillo-mania.
It rolls quite nicely off the tongue
Like the type of disease one with
Deep seated fears and complex facades
Would possess
When did this bad habit begin and form?
Has is always been silently lurking within this body?
Ready to pounce on any destructive opportunity
That would arise from my gut

Tricho-tillooooo-maniaaa.
I can overcome it, I know I can
Wait no, an hour went by and oh
Another pile of discarded hair on the floor
Again. And again.
If this luxurious mane of thick, dark hair is so
Admirable and wanted.
Why can I not stop plucking it from the very
Fibers of my skull’s skin?

Tricho-tillo-mania.
Keep it up and there will be naught
A single strand left on top of this girl’s head
My fingertips are aching and raw
Pleading with me to stop this
Nitpicking of these brown straws
Even as I type my nails
Scratch and burrow into my flesh
Pricking and prodding for what?
I wish I knew so I could tell you.

Trichotillomania.
Maybe my innermost desire
Is to rip this bruised skin and broken hair off my body
Until I am nothing more than a hot, ****** mess
Of congealed, dripping, internal organs
And a new case of polished, refined
Poreless, porcelain skin
and ruby- red sensual lips
Could **** me up and out of it
A perfect stranger would emerge
Free from my vice and sin.

you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer. All poreless and bright
and insinuating sweetness. Filled me up
with your secret eruption then shut me down
with your sleek silver tongue. Lava barricaded my eardrums,
enhancing my blood, fire in your eyes.
I was a plum, stealing forth
in the wake of your Augustine heat. My tender skin
gave way to your deft touch.

But then I bit down,
tasted the flesh beneath your glossy sheen
and oh how it betrays you!
So yellow and unripe, so taut with newness,
still clinging to the brightness of dawn,
spring-frozen with fear of the darkness
of my nectar.

Today I woke up with a magnet
in my pitted stomach. Echoes of
cold metal scour my throat. That love-
-less twang in the aortal penumbras--hope,
a refuge swallowed by the ephemeral night.
I always knew
you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer.

why don’t you open me up & sip from my heart
then glance towards your landscape
and pull it towards you with an umbilical cord
stolen from one of my countless holes, gaps in me

why don’t you open the sun up & let it breathe
just the way my pancreas pumps, sinking in
                      and spitting up
little shards of glass you wedged inside

gathered from tree-babies, lifted from the sky
the world’s so green but you would rather separate  
                                           my thighs
         see the realm that grows in my body

give the fauna a wet kiss & sip the gore stringing
from the core of it, pure poreless skin
i tell you what to do but i really just want you
to want me the way naïve terrain curls around life

I keep peeling off my face and
throwing the skin into the earth
hoping the ritual of burying
can flower a new layer upon me.
All smooth and poreless.
Erased in all the ways I've been taught to long for,
yet somehow retaining features
that some ******* corporation has spoonfed
generations of us into loving.

Unearthing a few grains of soil could create sinkholes
Or create more solidarity
The ones that grow and stand tall
Are ripped out and harvested for sustenance

We live in it
grow in it
sustain it.

Our bonds are like packed soil,
porous but poreless
in appearance
a state of perpetual disturbance

With every handful forcefully taken
endless grains fall in on themselves.
To save face
save race.

I had a dream about her last night.

We were different but the same. Gray hairs, gray eyes, New scars, Old memories.

Weaving through a foreign castle, crumbling. Rollerskating on cobblestone floors. Rough surfaces yet smooth sailing.

She was wearing cherrywood lipstick.
Every single tattoo, concealed and forgotten. When she smiled the gap was bridged. Requiem for flaws that never existed.

An orange friend with white pants and golden eyes hovering. Laughing together, smiling together, making trouble. How it used to be.

Yes.

She was there too.
She wasn’t me.
I was okay with that.

I saw how they slow danced.
How they cared and loved.
A perfect human in my eyes had changed in someone else’s arms. I didn’t mind.

Yet, I couldn’t tell you if she was happy.
I want her to be. Did she know happiness with me? Is it a game of following the leader?

I won the race, and I still got the **** beaten out of me. Too fast, too slow, just right? **** prize money, I just want peace.

Poreless skin hitting stone harder than cayendo and I was not the one coming to the rescue. Standing by nevertheless.

Watching new lovers roll around in the grass from a window in a tower. Sill cracking yet intact. Being strong on my own despite the pain.

Making love to other women, and not loving other women. Moving at the pace of the sun. Emotions stitched into the moon.

Are we deceiving each other? Am I deceiving her? When the foundation caved the walls stood tall. Sturdy and ruined. Holding both, destruction and tolerance.

A playground for the curious, hopeless, and romantic. I’ll dance here for a while. This is still my home. Diminuendo into the darkness. I’ll rise again tomorrow.