there is a constant ache behind the eyes - dim,
like the dying embers of a fire. my stomach
is always too full of everything I didn't eat, the
foreignness spread like black mold beneath the
surface of everything.

picking at hangnails, picking at chapped lips, picking
the scabs that scabbed over my spirit.

my tongue is scratched like a scratched cd,
I have only one or two things that I keep
repreprepeating.

there is a build-up in my throat of apologies,
lingering on my breath and the truth I have been
keeping in my belly, the truth I have swallowed so
greedily, the truth is I haven't
much

truth.

it seemed when the air was thick with heat the streets were
seething like the sweat on my back as I'd climb each
minuscule lump in the earth as if it were a mighty mountain -
ten thousand feet tall. hair
stuck to my neck the way
kisses stick to your lips when
you want more than a kiss -
I'd pull it up and away from my face.

it has been
it has been
a lifetime and a half between the cold that was and
the cold that is - now, here, in my bones and holding down
the pavement with frigid arms, stubborn. my hair is
longer now, growing out and it curls like a cat at my
neck to rest, spreading like hot soup spreading
down my
chest.

your voice a sweet
          ripe
          be-
          cause
every morning in my
          stomach left
          gravel-
          like
coffee-stained tongues,
          rolling from tips  
          like peach pits -
          devoured
slowstickysweet, the
          center
          of each
          earthy
          peach.

the heat between my hands as I clench
them, between me and this
seat as I writhe against it, the ache
in my spine from sitting up
straight, the purse of my
lips and the
sting of my
eyeswide
dry
eyes.

no breath and then one deep
one. two, three. fourfivesixseven - !

slowbreathing.
no heaving sighs.
no looking left,
no looking
right.

hips are farther apart when I sit, hands are toes are
spread fingers like spindles like broken into minute portions of
matter, moving about in this



                                
                            ­             big                            &                        empty




                                                       not mov
                                                              ing but
                                                              breath
                                                                   ing and
                                                                   tingl
                                                                        ing, too

legs stick-straight
my hips don't gyrate
my hair's not well-trained
and my ******* aren't the same
size

my eyes
aren't bambi-watching-his-mother-get-strapped-to-the-back-of-a-van-BIG
they're not blue like the atlantic, but grey like
cigarette ashes.

my eye-lashes aren't a foot in length,
they don't billow when I blink
and I've lost so many, a ton,
ones that I didn't even
get to
wish
on.