I will cut off my nose to spite my face.
I will take my own eye for my own eye,
My own tooth for my own tooth,
Until I have none with which to see, to chew.
I will rip my hair to mourn myself.
I will suffer.
You will suffer.

For every time you fed me too much or too little,
You will **** fire,
You will ***** and breathe it in,
You will hold fat to your bones,
You will suffer.

For every time I thirsted by your will,
You will **** yourself in front of others,
You will **** floods,
You will **** oceans that
You did not even drink for me,
You will suffer.

For every time you, as a child,
Jumped from a high place and landed on my straight knees,
Or kept bad posture,
Or sprained something,
You will fall and bleed,
You will lose control of your legs,
Your feet will ache and blister,
Your knees will scream,
Your joints will pop,
You will jump and shiver with pain,
You will suffer.

For every time you did not clothe me warm enough,
You will sweat naked,
You will sweat standing still,
You will sweat until you are drenched and
You will stink, stink, stink,
You will suffer.

For every night you did not let me rest,
And every morning that you allowed me to languish,
You will fall asleep sitting straight up,
You will never feel rested,
Your eyes will live in dark hollows,
You will not be able to fall asleep at night,
You will not be able to sleep longer in the morning,
You will suffer.

For every time you shaved my hair away and cut me and left welts,
You will grow coarse fur,
You will leave infected cuts no matter how sharp the razor,
You will watch the hair on your head grow lank and thin,
You will suffer.

For every time you picked at my skin and nails,
You will grow zits,
You will grow boils,
You will grow infections,
You will host parasites,
You will break nails,
You will suffer.

For every time you strained my eyes,
Denied me sleep,
Did not drink enough,
Drank caffeine,
Drank alcohol,
Your skull will split,
You will be blind,
You will ***** from the pain in your head,
You will wish to tear out your eyes and teeth,
You will suffer.

For my ***** that you broke,
You will be too tight and dry to enter,
You will bleed uncontrollably and
You will clutch at your womb for its cramps,
You will stink worse than other women,
You will have sagging, aching *******,
You will have urinary tract infections until you are scarred,
You will suffer.

You will suffer because
I am not your vessel,
I am your jail.

You will suffer because
You do not pilot me,
I drag you.

You will suffer,
You will suffer,
You will suffer.

Other people are getting love letters
Through my mailbox,
But I'm writing in cursive on ruled notebook paper
In a language of one.
Can this week's new health crisis
Please identify yourself?
Will you frame everything in illness
Until your life is only messy buns,
Cardigans, slippers, and frozen pizzas?
Where are my shoes and earrings,
My mauve lipstick, and milk complexion?
Where is the baby powder I used to use
To reduce the chafing of my thighs?
People in hell want ice water and
I think I get it, *******.

Pills on the table,
Burnt toast abandoned on the counter,
Dregs of coffee in a floral cup;
Someone's been here.

If you look in the mirror and
See her blue-bruised eyes,
****** Mary about to
Go out to the bars for the night?
That was once my mirror.

I haunt everywhere I choose to live,
And you can't sit at my table without
Drinking the wine I've drunk.
Get ready to feel.

I don't find myself here often,
Sugar grainy under my nails at the quick,
But something bitter sleeping under
The corners of my tongue.
Chasing myself through dark rooms
And thinking,
"I miss something sweet.
I must be an oyster."

Whose floor did I sleep on
And leave a shadow behind?
In what grass have I vomited,
To leave myself standing there greeting strangers?

"That's my house,"
She points into the darkness behind her,
Or out of the mirror and into your room,
Or at a lightning-struck tree trunk on the side of a fast and lonely road.
"That's my house."

Here lies on the bier
My sanity
My baby
The gate on the edge
Of the precipice
Has given way and
I'm keeping the pieces in the refrigerator

There came death
In the middle of a two month period
Designated for mourning many things
Bookended by my crying
Alone
In the dark

If the well of life were reachable
She would be the first thing I'd throw in
Even if I knew she would not love me
Even if I knew she'd come back sick
I never imagined I could not make someone immortal by loving them

I have never kept a home for long
When push comes to shove
I can part with anything to
Lighten my load
I was always afraid to test this with her
It failed as I knew it would

Give her back to me in exchange for any promise, any favor, any fortune

I just
It makes me feel like
You've been
Avoiding me.
This echoes within and without
And I am leaving a message
"We're in hot water
Nice if you could call back
Love you
Bye"

On a couch
And somewhere inside
I turn corners to scream a name into the dark
I hear my name from far away faintly
But I get no answer
And I do not answer

I wind through to search
And I stand still waiting
And there is her back
And someone is behind me
"Move"
I am still
She is still
"Move!"
I am still
She is still and I lose control and I am screaming
And my ears are ringing and my face is burning
And I am screaming through tears "Turn around turn around turn around"
And I do not move
And she does not move but strands of hair ride my frantic breath
And I feel the breath on my back
And I lunge forward to shake her
And I am clawed by the tiger

And in my hands are sand
And I kneel down
And she's running through my fingers
And there was never anyone to blame
I just
It makes me feel like
You've been
Avoiding me.

I loved being me,
I liked knowing where the boundaries
Between myself and others were.
Lord Apollo has no boundaries,
Especially not with women.
Can you blame me for running from him?
Big game hunter,
Bright like the sun,
Widely praised as having
The most fabulous hair?
When he met me, he said
"I'm Apollo,"
And that's it.
He looked at me expectantly,
I barely knew what he wanted.
He was trying to bleed over into me,
And I'm not into that.
Yeah he knows what people think of him,
And he agrees,
And I don't know if I want
To hang out
With people who don't know others' worth
As well as their own.
Lord Apollo doesn't,
Cause he's chasing me like I'm a deer,
Worth a trophy,
Like the ones that line Zeus' banquet hall.
No thanks,
I'll have no part of
Motionlessly
Watching over others' happiness
For eternity.
He's still behind me when I turn to look back,
And he keeps shouting out the name of love,
But it's Ares' eyes,
Not Aphrodites',
That I see leering at me through the trees.
This isn't courting,
This is a War of Attrition.
He'll chase and he'll chase even if,
At the end,
He'll only have caught up to my dead body,
Stretched out in exhaustion,
Tongue lolling out.
No matter, he'll just
Hoist me up by the antlers
And take a picture.
I call out to my father,
Because who else do we trust to
Run off our unwelcome suitors?
He says there's little he can do
To curb the lust of a man who so outranks him.
Because that's all that matters among men, right?
So I say "what's the little you can do?"
And he says,
"Fight fire not with fire,
But with the things that grow plants:
Water, time, and patience."
And I feel a seed sprout in my stomach.
Yes!
Trees are notoriously unfuckable!
I still have to outrun Apollo for a little while,
But the transformation is already starting,
And what's a better way to evade ****,
Than  just not being a woman?
It's getting hard to run,
My lungs are already wooden,
And when my knees bend, they creak.
I have to stop now or I'll certainly crack and break,
But it feels lovely to take root,
Feet pushing down into the soil and
Becoming feet no more.
Oh, but here comes Apollo,
And he melodramatically sighs,
"Oh! To behold the transformation that now
Ends your lovely life!"
What a stupid person,
I'm not ending,
I'm becoming.
He's finally caught me,
And for a few seconds,
Flesh touches flesh,
But, thankfully,
I become a tree before he can get a ***** in.
I settle into the bark walls I have made part of myself,
And get ready to eat sunlight for a near eternity.
If I still had a face, it would be smiling,
That is,
Until Lord Apollo,
His most highly unsubtle deer-mangler,
Rips a ******* limb off of me.
Now my consciousness is split
Between myself the tree,
And myself, the laurel wreath trophy,
Which Lord Apollo wears,
And Heroes, in his name, wear.
Oh, I should have known that to
Him
And men like him,
Whether I was a woman or a tree did not matter,
They only wanted to use me,
And they were Hellbound to find a way.

I am like all other fools;
Nothing broke my heart.
My spine of brittle woven sticks
Cracked under nothing.
My lungs gave out under
Years of whistling
"Shu-Shu, Xu-Xu,
Xu-ni-de."
They had breathed in too many daydreams
And real air calcified them with the shock
Of finding it all had been delusion.

A life of smiling at babies and dogs and buttercups
Left me unprepared for their destruction
And my own ruin.
It was my own fault that I was abandoned
In the face of a tsunami of stormclouds
Barreling out of the Western sky:
The last sigh of a sun that goes there
Each day
To die.