It's teeth, it's
teeth wear down,
eroded with the
acid of time and
memory

she told be this
but

the memories, the
memories bite still
sometimes and the
distance

the distance between
who I am and who I
used to be
is growing

growing like an
unweeded garden
and the weeds

the weeds, too
bite and the
bites are

as hard, as
consuming as
fire and
ice

Without sunlight you cannot grow a seed

yet I stand here, feet planted firmly on the ground

grass underfoot, unweeded and beautiful because of it

I do not need to lean towards some far flung favour of yellow

paint, precisely drawn across the sky

when I can feel the roots of ancient trees beneath my feet

the rejected apples that turn wasps wild with drink

I can eat rotten fruit until my mouth turns sour

bitter, bitterness, so often mistaken as a flaw in character

yet it is the only leg I have to stand on

and I shall not sink to my knees, quivering, for anyone

again

Once upon a time,

you and all of your kind

lived under the ridges and

grooves of my mind.

Careening the folds and

uploading your endlessly

flowing line of words that

seem to cut and obliterate

the flowers of my mind into

a massacre of compost.

You turned beauty into ugly

with every syllable of

every word, like acid –

you scarred my mind

and left rough behind.

And every night as the moon

read bedtime stories to the

sunlight you took it as an

invitation into my darkness.

Offering nooses and pills –

claiming it was the savior

I so desperately wanted and

so desperately needed.

Praising my suffering,

and poisoning my mind –

you grew an unweeded garden

upon my lobes.

So that when I looked in

a mirror you showed me

poison ivy and

prickles of roses

rather than the

blush of marigolds and

phantom kisses of lilac –

you and all of your kind

distorted my mind –

and now I lay here

waiting and waiting

in the darkness,

for you to appear.

I have lost all sense of my hands
Everything they touch is unfelt
And unkind
The contortionist of my mind
It is like the sun on closed eyelids
A fear of what you feel instead of see
A fear of the hairy arachnid
Behind the tree
A fear of me

Why is the abstract mind an afterthought
Sometimes I fight to see what’s behind physical existence,
What is there, inside,
To see inside, behind the eye,
Behind the mind
Bellowing out
Unfound, untied
Unbound to those who try


What about: I am; therefor I think?
Though a thought can be a hinderance
It can also be a seed
A garden unweeded
That wields, and grows, and feeds.

It's teeth, it's
teeth wear down,
eroded with the
acid of time and
memory

she told be this
but

the memories, the
memories bite still
sometimes and the
distance

the distance between
who I am and who I
used to be
is growing

growing like an
unweeded garden
and the weeds

the weeds, too
bite and the
bites are

as hard, as
consuming as
fire and
ice